Serbian President Vučić to Run in Parliamentary Election for Prime Minister

Aleksandar Vučić has confirmed that he will run in Serbia’s early parliamentary election in October, seeking to return to the prime minister’s office after nearly two years of protests against his rule.

Vučić had already said that he would bring the election forward by almost a year from its planned date at the end of 2027. He had also suggested that he might stand. He now says he will run, with the election date expected to be confirmed next week for one of the final two weeks of October.

To contest the parliamentary election, Vučić will have to resign as president. He said that becoming prime minister again would be the final office he held. If he wins and completes the next parliamentary term, he would have spent 16 years as Serbia’s dominant political figure.

A recent poll gave his Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, 35.7% support. The party has been in government since 2012, but it trailed the Student List, a movement formed by university students who have led mass protests against the government for almost two years. The SNS won an outright majority in the December 2023 election.

Vučić served as prime minister from 2014 to 2017 before becoming president. He won a second presidential term in 2022, which is his final one under constitutional term limits. Once associated with Slobodan Milošević’s authoritarian government as information minister, he later adopted more pro-European and moderate positions, before moving toward nationalism again and distancing Serbia from the European Union, despite the country’s candidate status since 2012.

The protests intensified after 16 people died when a canopy collapsed at a recently renovated railway station. What began as demands for accountability developed into broader accusations from some Serbs that Vučić’s government is becoming increasingly authoritarian and corrupt.