Student List of 250 Candidates Has Been Ready for Months, Serbian Students Say

A 250-name student candidate list in Serbia has been ready for months, but its organizers will not publish it until elections are formally called.

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Since we are not running as a traditional party, this entails publishing those forms, and then a citizens’ group is formed, so the citizens’ group cannot even be formed before elections are called.

Speaking to N1, students Anđela Prodanović and Marko Đenadić said the list would be submitted by a citizens’ group of 10 to 15 people. The group cannot be formed before elections are announced, they said, and the smaller group of formal submitters will not represent the list’s core. Its members will be selected according to criteria established by the students, then collect signatures and submit the list to the Republic Electoral Commission.

The students said they have been engaged in an informal campaign since first demanding elections nearly 500 days ago. Their activities include “Student in Every Village,” “Student Calls” and door-to-door outreach explaining how citizens can take part in the electoral process.

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Have any other political party or coalition published its list? Do we have the government’s list or the opposition’s list?

Prodanović said the list will be released after the election call because the required forms and citizens’ group must then be established. Đenadić said the delay also reflected “technical and tactical” reasons, asking whether any other governing or opposition party had already published its list. He said the exact timing would also be tactical, while the legal framework requires publication during the opening part of the 30-day campaign.

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Citizens should take that money and invest it in the student campaign. If they do not want to do even that, they should invest it in their own lives.

Addressing government financial assistance announced during the campaign, Đenadić said citizens should accept the money and put it toward the student campaign, or use it for their own lives. Prodanović rejected concerns that revealing the candidates could hurt the list’s popularity, saying the students had selected people under clear criteria and trusted both their choices and the public’s confidence in them. Đenadić added that their own polling still showed greater public trust in the students than in the authorities, though they use surveys to understand citizens’ problems, information sources and positions.

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We chose the people so there can be no such concern. There were clearly defined criteria for selecting them.