In order to get an answer to the question of what kind of prime minister Aleksandar Vučić would be, we don't need to imagine the future, but only to recall the past and the past 14 years spent under the sign of the initials AV and the interest group known by the abbreviation SNS
Aleksandar Vucic voluntarily abdicates from the position of president and he wants the prime minister's chair in order to, finally within the framework of the Constitution, continue his messianic mission, convinced that history will remember him as a visionary leader, a wise statesman, a brave savior of the country, a guardian of Serbian history, culture and tradition, a guardian of stability, a great benefactor and a grandiose builder.
Ostavku he is running for the position of the President of the Republic and with such a manipulative maneuver shortens his five-year mandate, which expires at the end of May 2027, and according to the Constitution he can no longer run for the head of state again. Vucic can't do something?
The scenario is already set. SNS, as an "ordinary member", made him official as a candidate for Prime Minister. His second coronation as prime minister - the first was in April 2014 - is part of a political project that we are following in real time.
The President of the Assembly, Ana Brnabić, was hiding her face. She hinted at the "Putin-Medvedev model": while he is prime minister, the Constitution should be changed, "so let him return to be president." For life.
Serbia is entering a period of uncertainty before the extraordinary parliamentary elections, but Vožd, while dreaming big dreams and eating nothing, is convinced of the victory of the cartel of his progressives.
What kind of prime minister would Vucic be? What would his internal and external policy be like, while he puts his personal stamp on all events with the distinct insignia of the cult of personality?
In order to get answers, we don't need to imagine the future, but only to recall the past and the past 14 years spent under the initials AV and the party known by the abbreviation SNS.
All his plans are not known, twists and turns are not excluded, but the thinking matrix of the Grand Prefect of Kand is strengthened by constant consultation with astrologers. Did he choose October 25 as election day by accident? Namely, then retrograde Mercury, a symbol of blackness and aggression, will be at its peak. It hints at an unchanged vision of Serbia's development - despite the fact that the majority of citizens believe that the country is not going in the right direction.
Until now, Vučić has unquestionably controlled the legislative, executive and judicial authorities, the army, the police and the services. According to the same matrix, he secured the obedience of the Serbian Orthodox Church and he convinces himself that the people will canonically include him in the saintly nomenclature of the suffering country in the new elections. He does not care about the fact that the saints, those who are pleased with God, are proclaimed only after death. In the will of God, time is a relative thing, but he has no time to wait because there are so many jobs that still need to be done.
What he has kidnapped so far, he would now, referring to the Constitution, keep as the first minister. Velmoza is determined to do everything to show that the power in Serbia is where he is. The government must have everything, and opponents should not exist or could at least be invisible.
The best signal of the collapse of democracy is the political leader's unwillingness to step down, so it is clear that Vučić has no intention of reforming the country in the direction of democracy, building the rule of law, human and media freedoms... Viewed from his point of view - and why should he when he has been in power for close to a decade and a half.
The winning team should not be changed, it is an old rule in sports, but in social life it is also important how one wins. In a fair game or with a bribed referee who gives red cards only to the opponents, or with the police who liked the baton?
Authoritarianism, despotism, xenophobia, cult of personality, renewal of national myths, brutal propaganda, anti-European policy, elimination of political opponents, glorification of wars and war crimes would reign...
Once a populist, always a populist. Vučić would continue to make his way between flags and banners, to visit factories for the production of mushrooms and Indonesian noodles, blast furnaces, hospitals and clinics, water treatment plants, to talk with workers and peasants, play chess, caress children and eat sutlijash with them, to buy apples and snacks at the local grocer, to drink brandy with the host... Finally, he sent squatters to schools in history.
The country, which is already polarized to the point of incandescence, would continue to be divided because Vučić is building a bunker mentality, in which the government and those he gathered with the help of privileges and blackmail are locked up. A new intensification of political and social conflict and instability would follow, which would receive an additional restoration of absolutism and an increase in repression as a response.
Ever since the radical times, Vučić views politics as an endless struggle between "us" and "them". He is allergic to any criticism and dialogue. From his radical days, he had the habit of not looking at the other side as rivals, but as an evil that should be silenced: "There is no force that will force me to talk to the leaders of the opposition."
He is convinced that it is impossible to organize a strong and powerful state without enemies, so he recruits them everywhere - from students to teachers, taxi drivers, bikers and doctors to the rector of Belgrade University.
He relies, and he would do the same as prime minister, on those whom he provides access to the cake of corruption and on those in whom he managed to instill a sense of dull helplessness. For a good half of the population, on the other hand, it would systematically kill optimism and enthusiasm.
With the new election campaign, which lasts 365 days a year, he would ensure the continuation of the instrumentalization of the undeclared state of emergency and chaos, convinced that he works best in an aggressive atmosphere and that he manages best in such an environment. When there is no drama, then he will create it. These are all those "coups", "assassination attempts", "world conspiracy", "color revolution"...
Vengeful as he is, he would not forget how, for the sake of the students, in four walls, with a bottle of wine, he was afraid of lustration, apprehension, investigation of the origin of the property or prison, all of which the students threatened him in 11 points. He would not forget those who told him in Užice, Niš or Novi Sad that he was not welcome. Long would be the hand of his vengeance. One hundred blockers for one Serb defender.
Vučić brutally showed that he does not want to be a guardian of legality, much less a reformer who would make Serbia a prosperous democratic state. During his two presidential terms, he was neither a moral authority nor a model for respectability, but that does not diminish the obscene abilities of someone who, with shamanic ease, declares a lie to be the truth.
He became everything. He wondered about the election of the patriarch. He appointed commanders in the army and police, approved deans of faculties and heads of clinical centers. They control theaters and film festivals. He was the coach of the national football team. He became the first sommelier in Serbia, and when needed, also a chef. Delia is the best student...
All that time he humiliated ordinary people by saying that they would be nothing without him, accusing them of laziness and lack of Protestant work ethic. In outbursts of uncontrolled anger, he cursed ministers and threw ashtrays at them. He broke the doorknobs of the presidency.
He would not give up on offering himself on television in huge quantities and with their help he creates parallel realities. In his capacity as editor-in-chief, he personally determined which of his members would be in which morning program.
Televisions and tabloids became his instrument for often very perfidious dealings with political dissidents and for the promotion of far-fetched, historically unfounded and unconvincing ideological constructions, which do not respect decades and centuries of real national experience.
He would passionately try to complete the work so that the voice of "blockade-terrorists, Ustasha and other Serb-haters" would no longer be heard. The regime media would glorify his brilliant victories and open up even more to quasi-journalists, vulgar propagandists, self-promoting analysts, various political philosophers or historians who promote the thesis that the Serbs came first and only then the amoebas and that Serbia was never better before he came to power.
As prime minister, he would keep all that, and probably expand his own powers. State and nation are irrelevant, all with their own interests. There is only the regime and the one on the throne, the one who moved from Andrić's crown to Nemanja Street.
In order to satisfy Caesar's obsessive ambition to be in power - he hardly had others - he worked tirelessly. "I hate to rest. I can't lie down," he declared in 2020, thus teaching a lesson to politicians who think that a salon engagement with a glass of whiskey is enough. Still hungry for power, he now promises a more efficient government with a maximum of 12 ministers. Christ and the 12 apostles.
He read a lot of political, sociological or marketing literature, practiced his memory, but seven years ago he disclosed his approach. He told the opposition: Win the elections, and then do what you want, but until you win, I will do what I want. That is his perception of power. I can. So what?
He led the country by building infrastructure. He wooed investors by offering them astronomical incentives and benefits, but definitely killed any production. He financed megalomaniac projects, including his celebrated Expo27, by borrowing, but he carefully selected creditors who would accept shady combinations, which became the basis of endemic corruption.
He could boast that during his time Serbia got more than 40 dollar billionaires on the Swiss list, but he did not insist on that because he would have to reveal who they are. Vučić, as the new leader of the nation, would emphasize economic development, investments, and jobs in the exposition of his government's program. The well-known inventory under the slogan "Serbia wins" would be spiced with the use of the word "change", but that would be pure demagogic obscenity. The sell-off of Serbia, or rather what is left, would continue.
He prepared the ground for himself. Institutions have been usurped. The country was robbed, as was its coffers. The motives are unchanged: the personalization of our money would remain the guiding idea.
One of the biggest sins, which the possible new prime minister would not intend to correct, is that for more than a decade, society has been sent a pernicious message: crime pays.
He often announced a merciless fight with the mafia. He would repeat it as prime minister, but since the fall of the Novi Sad canopy, corruption has become the foundation of his government's biggest political challenge. Who should believe him?
The regime would protect itself through the Government. As before, the judiciary would be in charge of erasing traces of corruption and other criminal activities. The prosecutors were clearly told that they should leave corrupt people alone, especially the big ones.
Judges who are Vučić's would also be in the same team Urbi et orbi studied and Machiavellian established who is for the court and who is for the Svetosavki Order.
Soldiers with epaulettes of higher ranks were reduced to obedient corporals a long time ago, and nothing would change about that. Under the guise of repression, the little bit of democracy that we have just begun to acquire would continue to be eroded. Penetration of fear would be everyday. The state would be guarded by police officers who should be arresting drug cartels, not mediating between rival cartels in order to provide the authorities with a steady flow of rackets from both sides. Masked legionnaires who swore loyalty to him with blood would stand on the defense of the fatherland - which was only a symbolic confirmation of omerta and the creation of a mafia state. He pays them with our money to restrain students "who destroy the constitutional order". How do they tear down something that doesn't exist? The President is the one who violated the Constitution a long time ago.
The auxiliary echelon would be filled by "partiotes" from the warrants, with whom he first built a bastion called "Ćaciland", and then he surrounded himself with them, assigning them the role of the Praetorian Guard.
He would go on to destroy healthcare and, especially, education as the fear of people with knowledge proved to be justified. It is no coincidence that he declared in 2019 that he "despise the elite". He called some professors of the Faculty of Law "stinks and jerks".
His rancid politics would persecute knowledge as subversive. The only question is with whom he could lead the company, because in case of victory of the progressives, young people know where the exit is: at the airport in Surčin or at the Horgoš crossing.
He destroyed culture, but also football. It is well on its way to destroying the two most trophy sports: basketball and water polo. Novak Djokovic eluded him, but he managed to drive him to Athens.
Belgrade on the water, "which I made myself", is an architectural and environmental crime, but it is being organized into a capital location, so let the people of Dorćol dream of the lost Circle of Two, and let the people of Čubur burst with rage.
He would continue with the "Serbianization of Serbia". The Handball Association of Serbia became the Serbian Handball Association, the Water Polo Association of Serbia became the Serbian Water Polo Association, the Boxing Association of Serbia became the Serbian Boxing Association. We are waiting for the National Assembly to become the Serbian National Assembly, so that Serbia definitely ceases to be a state of citizens.
He would promote the New Serbia, the land of miracles and the golden age as the best of all orders, in order to boastfully refer to Leibniz. He would not be interested in the fact that Eurostat data show that in 2025, even a third of citizens could not go on holiday away from home, even for a week.
On the global level, it fit into the message of authoritarian, sovereignist like-minded "America first", "Russia first" or "China first". "Aca Serb" would refrain from loudly supporting the Serbian world, "Serbia first", but it is clear that this toxic idea is close to his heart.
He would continue to build relations with other Balkan countries according to the confrontational concept of radicals. Although he finished with the region a long time ago, he would continue to irritate the neighbors with "armed neutrality".
He incorporated his personal frustrations into his relations with Croatia, although he refrains as much as possible from quoting his former minister and head of Bija, who collectively calls its citizens "Ustasha". Closeness to the Kingdom of Tonga (consult the world atlas) is more important to him than to his first neighbor.
Bosniaks are only rhetorically on the list of those to be reconciled with, but in practice it is pure illusion. It was seen during the funeral of General Ratko Mladić. Since he failed to impose himself as an "elder brother" even through his political and church loyalists in Montenegro, he added "Montenegrins" to the list of his enemies.
He would continue to creep closer to the normalization of relations with Kosovo, but all under the guise of demagogic mimicry. Instead of starting to realize what he agreed to in the Ohrid Agreement, he would huff and puff about the defense of the "southern Serbian province" and insist that Pristina be marked on TV maps in the weather forecast.
If he becomes prime minister, he will not start with the capital he had on the global level as Angela Merkel's "favorite autocrat". He brought himself to the point where no one believed him. Serbia does not have a reliable ally that is necessary in this troubled world. Prime Minister Vučić will stubbornly continue on the path of President Vučić.
Pressured by unbridled hubris, he would continue to float, harboring the utopian illusion that he could successfully cooperate with both the East and the West. Pressed by opportunism, he does not want to understand that the European Union and Russia are two galactically distant worlds, just like America and China. In relations with the EU, he would continue the policy about which he has no dilemma: money, not values. So long as they tolerate it.
He would try to get close to the President of America and it is not excluded that he would not succeed. Donald Trump is buying his Balkan backyard with energy, and Vučić likes to sell off and is already offering him an investor called Đerdap 3 at a good price.
The progressives are bracing themselves, convinced that no one can stop them and that Vučić will be prime minister. They believe in that old story about the villagers who bring craftsmen to fix up their dilapidated church. When the masters ask what kind of church it should be, the villagers say: "Well, it should be bigger and more beautiful, but nothing should change."
This is what Vučić would be as prime minister because, as he said, "I am not a man of compromise when it comes to the future." At one time, he stated that he got drunk three times in his life: when "Zvezda" became the champion of Europe, when Slavko Ćuruvija was killed and when Zoran Đinđić was killed. If he succeeds in becoming Prime Minister, he could get drunk for the fourth time.
I would get drunk too - because Vučić staying in power would mark the beginning of the transitional stage from autocracy to dictatorship. So let the earth continue to grow in weeds. So whoever likes, let them go.
Real journalism costs money, and we will not be bought by tycoons and corporations. Support us with a one-time or monthly donation. The time for it is now!
Why is there nothing else between the overcome regime and the changes? What does the regime mean when it says it is defending Serbia? Why is the Student Movement indomitable? Who has the knowledge and real experience, and who leads without a day of work experience outside of politics? And why students win
After almost two years of protests, hundreds of kilometers walked, arrests, persecution and unprecedented social mobilization, Serbia is holding elections that could mark the end of a political era. Sociologist Marija Babović tells "Vreme" that the hope for change has not been so great since October 5, 2000, but she also warns of the danger that, if changes are not made, the country will face an even tougher authoritarian regime.
Their only weapon now is the media they control: like, we don't have an agenda, which is not true; as, we will betray the national interest, which is not true. One of their arguments is that we are afraid to go to the debate with Vučić. They do not understand that it is their punishment. This is a punishment for Aleksandar Vučić, who for 14 years conducted exclusively a monologue. For fourteen years he did not allow anyone any kind of dialogue, and now he would like to be rewarded or pardoned with the opportunity to talk to us. Well, he won't be able to. What he sowed is now reaping
These elections are not elections about Serbia's membership in the European Union, Kosovo and Metohija, gay marriage, tax policy or any other single political issue. Although parties on the fringes of political power try to impose these themes, at the heart of the upcoming political election is a much simpler dilemma: change or preserve the existing order. For more than a year now, surveys have shown that this is the primary dilemma on the ballot
In the RS, 19.800 people registered for the elections in Serbia, who will be able to vote at 28 polling stations. It remains unknown how many of them will cross the Drina on October 25 and vote in Serbia. In any case, I do not believe that the voters from Republika Srpska are the ones who will decide the winner of the elections in Serbia. Realistically, the voters from Republika Srpska can influence a little, but it seems that they are symbolically very important to both Vučić and the opposition.
There is, literally, no difference between the one who claims it is day in the middle of the night, or the one who claims to be a giraffe, from the claims we read on billboards: that Vučić is working to unify Serbs and that Serbia is doing better and better day by day.
The pre-election arrests due to the alleged "overthrow of the state" testify to the regime's panic. The bad news for them is - they can't arrest the whole people who decided to defend themselves from progressive beatings and election theft
The ring that tightens around Ćaciland Student list is getting narrower. Because there are more and more spoiled people who see the false prophet for what he is: a street obscener who is fighting Serbia
The archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
See all
Branimir Nestorović (pictured) claimed that he was received in Moscow "at the highest level" and that he was given the task of gathering pro-Russian forces. The source of "Vremena" says that he did not reach the top of the Kremlin, but that the lobbyists of Alexander Vulin opened his contacts. Now he leads the pro-Russian coalition with the People's Party
