Serbian critics of President Vucic sceptical of his announcement to resign

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has announced that he will resign in a few weeks’ time and call for presidential and parliamentary elections. But there is skepticism that the man who has dominated Serbian politics for 12 years is going to call it a day. They see it as a ruse, and believe that he may be plotting to return as prime minister because he is now serving his second and final term as president which ends in mid-2027. There is a lot of opposition to his polarizing politics.

Students have been protesting against the government for the last few years because they see the Vucic government as corrupt. The crash of an awning in Novi Sad which killed people is seen as evidence of the corruption that has spread across the governmental system. Vucic has managed to get the Serbian minority in Kosovo to keep its institutions. Kosovo broke away in 1999 because of the repressive policies of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic towards the Kosovars. When NATO attacked Serbia, the United Arab Emirates had run a large relief camp for Kosovo refugees in Kukes in Albania

Serbia is set to join the European Union (EU), but it has to satisfy the EU conditions of free elections and a clean government. Vucic and Serbia also face the huge dilemma of choosing between Russia, Serbia’s traditional partner because both are Slav countries and the two also belong to Eastern Orthodox Church. EU is opposed to Russia under Vladimir Putin because of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. So, it is a complicated issue of religion, race and political traditions which marks a close relationship between Serbia and Russia.

It might be possible for Serbia to join the EU without completely severing its ties with Russia because former eastern European countries like Hungary have been supporting Russia over the issue of war in Ukraine. What Vuvic would have to ensure is free elections and cleaning up the government system. This might be a more difficult task than balancing relations with Russia and EU.

Over the last few years, Vucic, who has emerged as a strong leader who reformed the crumbling Serbian economy through difficult reforms, had begun to undermine the democratic system, undermine judicial independence and intolerant towards oppositions, especially towards protesting students. And he has been resisting the protests through greater show of strength as in the overwhelming military parade to mark the national day in Belgrade least last year. But the protests have continued over the year.

The decision to resign and call for elections is seen not as a response to he countrywide protests but as a way of consolidating the power of his Serbian Progressive Party. He declared that he would a resign in a few weeks’ time, and that he would help his party to prepare the list for the parliamentary election. This is seen by the critics as a way for Vucic to come back to power as prime minister, while he would keep one of his nominees as president. It is the growing authoritarian politics of Vucic that is seen as a threat to the fledgling democracy in this part of Europe.

It has been the case that many of the former communist states which held out the promise of adopting democracy had moved to right-wing nationalist sentiment. Serbia was one of the earliest former communist countries – it was part of the Yugslav federation and the federation splintered into its component parts of Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia – that moved into the extreme nationalist mould under Milosevic in the early 1990s. Vucic is far from being a Milosevic, but he is showing too many signs of an authoritarian leader.