Will the SPS suffocate in the embrace of the far more powerful SNS or will it manage to preserve its party identity and electorate
Position Socialist Party of Serbia in the announced extraordinary parliamentary elections, whenever they are announced, is uncertain. High-ranking officials of that party often lead a public debate on the subject. The most prominent are the president Ivica Dacic and vice president Branko Ruzic, who are guesting in the media these days, pulling the party in different directions.
The established dissident of the ruling coalition, Branko Ružić, has for some time been advocating for the independent performance of the socialists in the upcoming elections, changing the narrative of the SPS and opening up to everyone, as well as cooperation with student list after the election.
Ivica Dacic, although still warm to staying in power in coalition with SNS, is not immune to the fact that the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić regularly humiliates his party.
"I took them to the government three times, even though I never needed them for the majority," Vucic said on Sunday on Informer television, and that the SPS "will not be able to dream of five percent when Ivica Dacic leaves, and the question is whether they will be able to pass the threshold of three percent."
Dacic responded subtly to Vucic's discrediting of the SPS and announced that it is "a stable and politically indispensable party, without which a serious political structure in the country cannot be built." However, he added that "cooperation with Aleksandar Vučić and the Serbian Progressive Party proved to be a guarantor of the political stability and security of the country" and that he is confident that the citizens will recognize this.
The goal of the public split in the SPS may be to test voters for the republican elections. Sending Branko Ružić on a reconnaissance mission to assess how much the SPS can win in the elections if it changes its narrative and repositions itself as the trump card is a possible SPS tactic.
So far, the SPS has run independently in all republican elections, without the Serbian Progressive Party. In the previous two election cycles, the electorate of the SPS was overwhelmed. In the 2022 elections, they won 11,79 percent, while only a year and a half later they won 6,73 percent.
The continuous decline of support, Dacic's devotion to Vučić, which led to the loss of party identity, among voters could force the SPS to appear together with the SNS for the first time in the next parliamentary elections.
In the last local elections, SPS participated in all ten municipalities in the coalition "Aleksandar Vučić - our family!". The results of the local elections indicate that the Socialists did not have too many choices to decide in which format they would perform. In Kula and Arandjelovac, the ruling list won only one mandate more than the opposition lists. The victory of the SNS in the local elections would not have been feasible without the socialists.
The SPS is no longer the tip of the scales that decides the winner, but a party that itself seeks a balance between disappearing in the shadow of a stronger partner and the risk of being left without political weight. That choice between dependence and uncertainty will determine whether SPS will be a relevant political factor of the government or a political footnote in the future.
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