SNS Puts Forward Stojan Radenovic for Assembly Speaker

Aleksandar Vucic, the head of the United Serbia list, announced on November 11 at a press conference at the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) headquarters in Belgrade that the party’s nominee for speaker of the National Assembly will be Professor Stojan Radenovic. He added right away that he does not expect the majority to accept the proposal.

It is the first public naming of a candidate for the head of parliament on behalf of that list. The Student List has already put forward its own candidate, and we reported that it is Aleksandar Cupic. At the same press conference, Vucic also said the list will accept the invitation to consultations on Friday, November 13, will attend Assembly sessions, and that its parliamentary group may be named “Serbia Against Terror.”

What did Vucic say about the candidate?

He justified the choice by pointing to the professor’s scientific standing. According to Republika, he said verbatim:

And we will offer Stojan Radenovic, the greatest living scientist Serbia has, the man because of whom we remain on the Shanghai list and some other important lists, and only because of him. Let us offer expertise, let us offer knowledge, tolerance, dialogue, conversation. Of course, they will not accept, and we understand that.

Speaking about the session ahead, he said the verification of mandates is approaching and that deputies do not have to elect the Assembly leadership that day:

So in a few days, on the 17th, we have the verification of mandates. They do not have to elect the Assembly leadership that day. They can, they do not have to. I think the struggle there now is between Scepanovic and Cupic.

According to the Novi Sad portal 021, Radenovic was born in 1948 in Dobra Voda near Leskovac and was a professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Belgrade from 2000 until retirement. He has about 400 published papers. He has been a deputy since 2022 and again since December 2023. The same portal reports that he is the oldest deputy and will therefore chair the constitutive session scheduled for November 17. Newsmax Balkans notes that its article does not mention this, and Vucic said only that November 17 is the day of mandate verification.

Will the list attend Friday’s consultations?

According to Vucic, the list received an invitation to Friday’s consultations from the current secretary of the National Assembly and will attend. He voiced his doubt that the other side will show up like this:

We received a call today from the secretary of the National Assembly, the current one, for consultations on Friday. I do not believe these rulers will come, because they like to govern from the parks, not through institutions. And everything they said, they lied. Institutions never interested them.

Vucic left open the question of what it would mean if only United Serbia turns up at the consultations: the list will, he said, act in line with the Constitution, the law and the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure. He added that he hopes the rights of opposition deputies will not be reduced, “because they always said before, their representatives, that they have insufficient rights.”

The name of the parliamentary group, by his account, has not been agreed. He described “Serbia Against Terror” as an idea that would fit the moment but is politically limiting, so it remains to be seen whether it will be a temporary or permanent name. In its November 4 statement, the Student List already addressed the SNS decision on the group’s name and assessed that it reinforces the image of a threat from which society must be protected.

Presidential elections and changes in the party

Asked whether SNS will have a candidate in the presidential elections, Vucic said that he does not decide that, but the Main Board and the party Assembly, which will meet in early and mid December. He gave his own view:

Personally, I think that at this moment not only are elections not possible, they are not normal, when people are literally fighting for breath. Not the criminals who walk freely and run the country, but ordinary people and those who think differently from them. But what I think means nothing.

He added that, if they asked him personally, he would “completely ignore” them. He also announced a personnel overhaul: 500 entirely new people, he said, must enter the SNS Main Board and Presidency.

What did he say about the Student List?

Vucic devoted most of the press conference to criticizing the new government. He said the Student List has another 110 days to form a government, that is, it can fail to form one for that long, and that this suits it best because it has nothing to show citizens. Of the list’s bodies he said they are not institutions but “terror, beating, persecution, harassment, abuse of the prosecution and abuse of a barely existing police.” Klix also quotes his sentence: “Their organs of government are not institutions.”

Vucic also claimed the following:

• arrests and detentions serve to intimidate, and as an example he cited the detention of the owner of the Milenijum Tim company
• lists of “safe votes” and call centers are, in his words, a normal thing, and he himself had a list of 30 people he called to vote
• he compared the demand for files on Radio Television of Serbia employees to the Gestapo, claiming that he never asked for files on Radio Belgrade employees from 1941 to 1944. Klix states that this demand of the Student List has not been published and the list has not confirmed it
• he called on the Student List to answer Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti on his calls for Serbia to recognize Kosovo’s independence

Commenting on how the new government treats the opposition, Vucic said: “But now revolutionary justice has arrived, which by definition is the highest injustice.”

In its November 4 statement, the Student List rejected the story of “revolutionary terror” and assessed that it was “constructed to spread fear among citizens.” No response to the statements from the November 11 press conference had arrived at the time of publication.

Consultations in the Assembly are scheduled for Friday, November 13. At the press conference, Vucic also voiced doubt that Student List representatives will appear at them, so Friday will show who sits at the table.