Silence! The Serbian List has not announced itself after the defeat of Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Serbia, in which the Student List won.
This party, the largest of the Serbs in Kosovo, was formed in 2013 with the direct support of SNS and Vucic, who admitted defeat on the evening of October 25.
However, Vuçiqi declared that SNS had won “everywhere where Serbs live in the region”, including Kosovo.
According to the preliminary results of the Republican Election Commission in Serbia, in the polling stations where Serbs from Kosovo voted, the “Aleksandar Vucic – United Serbia” list received about 71 percent of the votes, while the Student List secured about 21 percent.
At the level of Serbia, however, the Student List won over 52 percent of the votes, while the “United Serbia” of former president Vučić got about 39 percent.
For Ivan Vuçkovic, opposition representative of the Kosovo Serbs from Leposavici, these results mean that “nothing will be like before”.
“Freedom is coming to us from Belgrade,” he says to Radio Free Europe (REL).
Vuckovic and other opposition representatives of the Serbs in Kosovo blame Lista Serbe and Vucic for the deterioration of the position of the Serbian community.
They believe that the current government in Serbia, through the Serbian List, has “handed over” the Serbian institutions and powers that Belgrade used to exercise to the institutions of Kosovo.
Currently, in areas with a Serbian majority in Kosovo, only educational and health institutions operate within the Serbian system.
“After this great betrayal, as a result of which we have almost nothing left from Serbia in Kosovo and Metohija, it will be very difficult”, says Vladimir Radosavlević from Serbian Democracy from the north of Kosovo, an opposition party at the local level.
What will happen to the Serbian List?
Radio Free Europe reached out to Lista Serbe for comment following the release of the first preliminary results in Serbia, but did not receive a response by the time this article was published.
In the June elections in Kosovo, Lista Serbe won nine of the ten seats reserved for the Serbian community in the Assembly, while one mandate was secured by Nenad Rasić from the party For Freedom, Justice and Survival.
Rashiqi, who is a minister in the Government of Albin Kurti, supported the Student Movement in the elections in Serbia.
He assesses for REL that the cooperation of the Serbian List with the new government in Serbia is not possible.
Rasić does not exclude the possibility that the Serbian Progressive Party will now ask the Serbian List to withdraw, namely that its representatives will resign from the positions they hold.
“This could be one of the possibilities, but I don’t expect them to act morally and do such a thing. They are in power at the local level because the SNS has placed them in those positions in all possible ways,” Rashiqi says.
Lista Serbe currently leads all ten municipalities with a Serb majority in Kosovo.
Its officials also run Serbian institutions in Kosovo. One of them is the chairman of the Serbian List, Zlatan Ellek, who leads the Clinical Hospital Center in North Mitrovica.
Even Ivan Vučković, an assemblyman in the Municipal Assembly of Leposavic, believes that cooperation between the Serbian List and the new Government of Serbia is not possible.
“I am convinced that they will dissolve in the coming days. On the other hand, they cannot function without the support of Belgrade,” he says.
The same opinion is shared by Vladimir Radosavlević, also an assemblyman in Leposavij, in the north of Kosovo.
He considers that the Serbian List cannot remain in power in Kosovo, because, as he says, otherwise “the whole war would have been in vain”.
Even his party has supported the Student List and the protests organized by students.
“As someone who has been with the students since the beginning, I know that they will never accept cooperation with the Serbian List, the strong core of the SNS in Kosovo. They have been direct accomplices of Aleksandar Vučić in the great betrayal of Kosovo and Metohija. In short, their end has come and they will soon give an account for everything they have done,” says Radosavlević for REL.
As for Kosovo, the Student List has declared that it will act in accordance with the Constitution of Serbia, which considers Kosovo to be an integral part of it.
The Student List did not answer Radio Free Europe’s questions about whether it will cooperate with the Serbian List, including at the institutional level, and what is its position on future cooperation with the Government of Kosovo.
What do Kosovo Serbs expect from the new government?
Ivan Vuçković raises questions about the way the funds that Serbia has sent to Kosovo have been managed, claiming that Lista Serbe has committed numerous abuses.
The student political movement in Serbia was born out of student protests, at the center of which was the fight against corruption.
Vučković believes that this issue should be a priority for the new government even when it comes to Kosovo, especially for investments from the Serbian budget in areas with a Serbian majority.
In this context, he says that the representatives of the Serbian List “can seek political asylum in Kosovo”, as he believes that in Serbia they can face accusations of many criminal offenses.
“I am sure that even here (in Kosovo) there will be a change of power”, he says.
Vučković does not expect major changes regarding Serbia’s powers in Kosovo, but hopes that the new authorities in Belgrade will react to protect the remaining Serbian institutions.
“We can count on Serbia’s financial support, in the most real and fairest way. Some things have simply ended, but I hope that the new government will manage to correct some mistakes of the previous government, in terms of who leads the institutions, support and distribution of funds”, says Vučkoviqi.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Radosavlević hopes that the new government in Serbia will show more understanding for the Kosovo Serbs and will enable them to have more influence on the decisions that affect their lives.
“For us to decide our own destiny”, he says.
“The Student List does not need to do anything extraordinary. It is enough to appoint capable leaders and stop the theft of hundreds of millions of euros, which every year end up in private pockets, instead of going to the Serbian areas in Kosovo. This would significantly reduce the exodus of Serbs from Kosovo, which has reached staggering proportions,” says Radosavlević.
Milliqeviq: The new government in Serbia will reconsider the role of the Serbian List
The director of the non-governmental organization Aktiv, Miodrag Milliqeviq, emphasizes that the Serbian List, from a formal and legal point of view, is part of the political system of Kosovo and that the results of the elections in Serbia do not directly affect its status.
However, he says that the political reality is different, as the Serbian List has in practice functioned as a branch of the Serbian Progressive Party in Kosovo.
According to him, the change of power in Belgrade will raise questions about how this party will function in the future.
“As far as policies are concerned, there will be room for a radical revision. I am not talking about the restructuring of the Serbian List, but about a radical revision of the policy towards Kosovo, which will also include the representatives of the Serbian List. The question will be asked if they have misused their positions in the Serbian system during the time when the Serbian Progressive Party was in power”, says Milicevic.
He estimates that the issue of Kosovo is not among the main priorities of the Student List, but he expects that a part of its structures will deal with this topic.
According to Milliqeviqi, during the last years, Belgrade has left Kosovo Serbs in a legal and security vacuum.
The Serbian civil society in Kosovo had criticized the initiative of the Serbian List for the Serbs to leave the institutions of Kosovo in 2022.
At the same time, she also criticized the actions of the Government of Kosovo, which she mainly assessed as one-sided and discriminatory.
In 2024, the Government of Kosovo initiated the closure of Serbian institutions and announced the integration of Serbian health and education institutions into the Kosovo system, on the grounds that the operation of two parallel systems is unsustainable.
The international community, on the other hand, has insisted that such steps should be taken within the framework of dialogue and in consultation with the Serbian community./REL
