Aleksandar Vucic has led Serbia since 2012, as deputy prime minister, then prime minister, then president. In September, he resigned the presidency so he could run for prime minister. On Sunday, Serbians voted on whether to let him keep doing the job he never left.
That's not stepping down. That's changing chairs at the same desk.
Here's what's real, per AP, the BBC and Al Jazeera. Vucic called these snap parliamentary elections in September after almost two years of student-led protests. The protests began when a train station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in 2024, killing 16 people, a collapse widely blamed on government corruption. The government built a canopy that fell down and a protest movement that won't.
Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party is facing the Student List, a slate of 250 candidates picked by student assemblies at universities: professors, actors, farmers. Its top name is a cardiologist from Novi Sad University named Ilija Srdanovic, who showed up to a BBC interview on a motorbike in a fluorescent yellow jacket. The movement has no hierarchy and no nominated leader. That's either the purest democracy in Europe or a group project, and every Serbian student knows how group projects end.
About 150,000 Student List supporters rallied in Belgrade on Thursday, per the BBC and Al Jazeera. An Ipsos poll had Vucic's party at 47 percent and the students at 40, though other polls put the students ahead. Polls close at 8 p.m. local time Sunday, with first indications about two hours later.
Vucic's closing pitch, according to Al Jazeera: higher pensions, higher public sector salaries, more money for state healthcare, and subsidies for young couples. Fourteen years in charge, and the plan for the next term is all the things he could have done in the first fourteen.
He also told supporters the student movement wants to "bring down our state," per the BBC, and claims the students are funded by foreign agents in Croatia and Montenegro, which they deny. In Serbia, the canopy falls on its own, but the students need a sponsor.
Vucic and his party deny accusations of repression, corruption and spying on opponents. The EU, which Serbia has been trying to join for years, has grown frustrated over the lack of judicial and anti-corruption reforms. Meanwhile Vucic keeps China as a major investor and Russia as his gas supplier, which makes him the only politician in Europe dating three continents and calling it independence.
Picture a fictional Belgrade retiree named Milan, who has voted under President Vucic, Prime Minister Vucic and Deputy Prime Minister Vucic. He went to the polls Sunday and asked for a ballot listing someone else. The clerk handed him one with 18 parties on it. Milan said that was nice, and asked which one was Vucic's this time.
On the sewer scale, this rates four rats out of five. One rat for resigning to run for the job underneath, one for the canopy, one for the foreign agents, one for the pension promise on year fourteen. The fifth rat is watching the count.
Vucic gave up the presidency to stay in charge. The students gave up their classes to change that. Only one side in Serbia is actually learning anything, and it isn't sitting at the desk.
And here's your bill: Social Security checks go up 3.6 percent in January, about $75 a month on average for retirees, per the Social Security Administration, and nobody had to resign anything to make the math work.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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