Roma National Council: One List, Boycott Call, RIK Request

The Roma Academic Circle on November 4 called on Roma men and women not to vote on November 8 in the election for the National Council of the Roma national minority, because only one electoral list has been approved for the body. The boycott call comes two days after the same group asked candidates on that list to refuse their mandates if elected. Meanwhile, the Democratic Union of Roma has asked the Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) to review whether approving the only list was lawful.

What is on the ballot on November 8?

Elections for national minority councils take place on Sunday, November 8, 2026. Councils are chosen by 23 minorities: 21 vote directly, while the Gorani and the Russians elect theirs through an electoral assembly. According to the sources, RIK has set up 949 polling stations and ordered 481,157 ballots for all minorities. We have written before about registration in the special voter roll, but we have not covered the dispute over the Roma list until now.

The Roma council has 35 members. The special voter roll for the Roma minority holds 61,030 voters, Telegraf reports. RIK approved a single list, “United Roma for a United Serbia,” which carries the name of Dejan Vlajkovic and was submitted with 1,331 legally valid statements of support. In the 2022 elections, Roma chose between two lists, and turnout was 57.6 percent of roughly 65,000 people on the special voter roll, according to Pressek.

What is the Democratic Union of Roma asking for?

In a statement carried by N1, the Democratic Union of Roma calls on RIK to check the election documents and review whether approving just one list for the council was lawful. The Union claims that the list’s lead candidate and its candidates hold high political and state offices, but the sources do not say which ones. According to Telegraf, RIK is being asked to determine whether there are grounds to annul the decision approving the list or to take another measure provided by law.

The party said in its statement:

“This circumstance calls for serious institutional scrutiny, especially given the concern among part of the Roma public over the previous poor functioning of the National Council of the Roma national minority. We do not wish to prejudge the decisions of the competent bodies, but we also do not accept that possible irregularities be ignored simply because the election deadlines have passed.”

The request builds on an earlier one. The Roma Union of Serbia had already demanded at the end of October that the only Roma list be withdrawn.

From refusing mandates to a boycott

On November 2, the Roma Academic Circle called on candidates from the only list to voluntarily refuse their mandates and not take part in constituting the new council. In a statement carried by Telegraf, the Circle said:

• “The right to vote without the possibility of a real choice is not full political democracy.”
• “This is not a question of personal interests or political conflicts. This is a question of the political rights of a people, their right to pluralism and the ability to decide their own future.”

The Circle also points to the legal deadlines. The new council must be constituted within 30 days of the final results being determined, and the council president must be elected within 30 days of constitution. If those deadlines are missed, the council is dissolved and extraordinary elections follow through an electoral assembly. A decision requires at least 18 of the 35 members, but the law, as the Circle points out, does not explicitly regulate how the quorum applies when mandates are confirmed, nor is it clear whether mandates can be given to other candidates from the same list. In their reading, refusing mandates would therefore not automatically dissolve the council, but it could raise the question of whether the conditions for constituting it are met.

On November 4, through the ROMinfomedia portal, the Circle went a step further. In a statement titled “One List Is Not a Choice,” it demands new elections with multiple lists and equal conditions for participation, and it describes the boycott this way:

“Our boycott is a message that we want different elections, more lists, equal participation and the right to freely decide whom we will trust.”

Telegraf reports that the Circle also sent the competent institutions a formal letter asking them to review the circumstances in which the elections are being held, including testimony about possible vote buying. The same paper stresses that having only one list does not in itself prove a violation of the law.

What does the other side say?

As of November 4, the available sources contain no response from RIK to the Democratic Union of Roma’s request, and no reaction from Dejan Vlajkovic’s list to the Circle’s calls.

The date itself stands. In Kragujevac, 1,488 voters, 905 of them Roma, vote on November 8 at two polling stations: the “Palilule” Local Community, Ratinceva 2, and the “Bubanj” Local Community, Grada Sirena 10.