What awaits us after October 25

In Serbia these days, there seems to be no other topic. Choices is a word you will hear in cafes, restaurants, shops, at work and at the family table. Everyone has their own calculation, a reliable person and information that should not be spread further, except, of course, to everyone who wants to hear it. Some know that Vučić has already lost. Others know he can't lose. The third know that he will win, but that they will not recognize his victory. They have in common that they generally know more than they can prove.

The prediction competition is somewhat reminiscent of the confidence in the octopus Paul, who chose the box with the flag of the future winner at the 2010 World Cup. In Serbia, the boxes have not yet been opened, but there are enough interpreters for each one. Only here, behind the question of who will win, there is something much more serious - what awaits us after October 25? And can the election night end the crisis that has long outgrown the parties, the assembly and their mutual confrontations?

There are three basic scenarios. The student list wins the majority that enables the change of government. The SNS, alone or with partners, retains the majority to form the government. Or the result remains uncertain and contested, with conflict over what voters really decided. In practice, the boundaries can overlap: a narrow victory for one side can easily become a third scenario. That's why we don't need another percentage estimate for this story, but an answer to the question of what drives each outcome.

The majority of votes and the possibility of forming a government are not the same thing. Parliamentary elections are not a duel in which the runner-up immediately leaves the field. Mandates are counted, a majority is sought, and between the announcement of the winner and the assumption of executive power there is a time that under normal circumstances is used for a handover. In these circumstances, it could also serve to prevent it.

HALF A MILLION AND ANOTHER BILL

On October 11, in Zrenjanin, Aleksandar Vučić said that he wants a convincing victory: "I want us to beat them by half a million votes!"

The desire is clear. Proof that it is achievable did not come in the package with it. In a campaign, such a message has the function of telling supporters that victory is certain, and opponents to prepare for defeat once again.

In the previous parliamentary elections, in December 2023, Vučić's list won 1.783.701 votes. Serbia against violence, NADA, Nestorović's list, Dveri-Zavetnici, the coalition of Radulović and Tadić and the People's Party together received 1.456.343. The difference was 327.358 votes. When Serbia against violence, NADA, the coalition of Radulović and Tadić and the People's Party are separated, their sum is 1.172.348, and the advantage of the SNS is 611.353 votes. Some will say that it is not all the same. Nestorović was not a reliable part of the bloc for the change of government, and Dveri and Zavetnici did not stay at the same political address either. Adding all their votes and calling them a single opposition would mean creating a coalition that did not exist. Moving those voters to today's student list would be an even more liberal calculation. However, the numbers show how much Vučić's advantage depended on the fact that his opponents ran separately, and part of the votes remained without a mandate.

Now the opponent's schedule has been changed. For years, Vučić built his dominance on conflicts within the opposition, its defeats, voter distrust and the possibility of turning every leader into a target. The student movement did not originate in that place and did not agree to the same roles. The authorities tried to introduce him to the well-known story of traitors, foreign mercenaries and destroyers of the state. But an opponent that does not have a single party leader did not fit into the already prepared, well-known narrative.

Historian Dragan Popović believes that the student list organized the pro-democratic part of society and gave it the impression that victory even exists as a possibility.

"They are the first ones who managed to bring us all together and restore hope that victory is possible," he told "Vreme". In his interpretation, this is not a moment in which voters choose between ideological programs. Mobilization against autocratic rule is on the table, competition of different democratic options is yet to come.

Bojan Pajtić, law professor and former president of the Democratic Party and the provincial government, predicts a turnout well above 65 percent. Popović believes that the government does not have a large reservoir of new voters and that the student list can attract former abstainers and those who are voting for the first time.

But turnout is not a magic threshold. It is not enough that more people come out - it is crucial who comes out, who they vote for and whether their vote ultimately gains political weight. Both expect that the higher turnout benefits the students, that is, their candidates.

photo: maja gočanin / fonet

FIRST SCENARIO A VICTORY TO BE TAKEN

If the student list wins the majority needed to change the government, the first test will not be the choice of ministers. The question will be whether the old government will accept that it has gone down in history, and some of them before the judges. Electoral victory and handing over the governance of the state are not the same event, especially where the distinction between the party and the state has been systematically erased for years.

Pajtić expects a temporary "dual government". At the republican level, there will be a new electoral majority, while the progressives will remain in local and provincial bodies, ministries, public enterprises and directorships. Parliamentary elections in themselves do not change all levels of government. They don't even change overnight the people who sign the orders, control the documentation and decide what the administration will implement and what will be left for some next Monday.

"We can only expect obstruction of the electoral process, and not an attempt at a peaceful handover of power," Pajtić estimates. He believes that the progressives would try to challenge the validity of the vote and extend the period until a new government is formed. In this context, he warns about the possibility of incidents with ballot boxes. This is his prediction of the government's behavior.

However, in his scenario, the old government loses some of its real power well before losing its formal functions. The administration, he believes, would begin to refuse obedience or enter into a kind of white strike. Directors would become more cautious, and people who had been carrying out the party's demands for years would suddenly remember the rules. In Serbia, the change in the political climate is often first noticed by the fact that someone who was not bothered by the law yesterday insists that everything be according to the law.

Pajtić also expects a change in the judiciary and prosecutor's office, that is, the activation of institutions that have been silent for a long time. This does not mean that the election result automatically creates an independent judiciary. It means that the disappearance of belief in the permanence of the same government could change the behavior of people who adjusted their professional judgment to its expectations. There is a difference between freeing institutions and running over their officials, which the new government would have to learn quickly.

Popović singles out the clarity of victory as a decisive condition. It must be large enough and unambiguous to produce in the state structures the knowledge that legitimacy has moved to the other side. It reminds of the fall of Milošević and the moment when parts of the power apparatus no longer wanted to defend him. The point of the comparison is that obedience often depends on the assessment of who the future belongs to.

When it becomes clear that the students have won, Popović believes, people in the system get the opportunity to explain the acceptance of the change by respecting the will of the voters. He is not sure that Vučić would then have enough space to stop the process. The power of his apparatus, he estimates, is often overestimated: the existence of dangerous people does not mean that they can turn the entire police force against the clearly expressed will of the majority.

Nevertheless, Popović does not rule out an irrational move. It is a fence that runs through all his considerations: the assessments are valid under the assumption that the government chooses actions that try to preserve power, and not at all costs to produce a conflict whose consequences it no longer controls. A clear victory narrows the space for resistance. It does not eliminate the possibility that someone will still try.

For the student list, therefore, the victory would be the beginning of another, different job. A movement that has gathered people around the demand for accountability would have to show that it can lead the country. The agreement that one government should leave does not solve the issues of budget, personnel, public enterprises and political priorities. Until then, the useful breadth of movement would become a space in which joint decisions must be made.

SECOND SCENARIO SNS WINS, THE CRISIS REMAINS

The victory of SNS a seems like the simplest continuation, but in essence it is not. The society entering these elections is no longer the same as the one that exited the previous ones. The new victory of the SNS would not be able to erase the political experience of the rebellion, nor to bring the people who organized themselves back to the time when they were convinced that they could do nothing.

Pajtić does not believe in the possibility of a big, undisputed victory for the government. He considers Vučić's announcements propaganda. If SNS retains power, expect a wave of young and educated people leaving. He sees such a decision as a consequence of losing hope that the country can change - when the political exit seems closed, the personal exit becomes the only solution.

Popovic also dismisses the possibility of Vučić's advantage of half a million votes, which he calls the realm of science fiction. But his main problem with the second scenario is a narrow victory under conditions he considers unfair. "I am afraid that a good part of the society will not accept his narrow victory", he says. The consequence would be new tensions and a prolonged political crisis.

Here comes a difference that cannot be resolved by a chart. One thing is whether the votes from the polling stations were properly counted. The second is under what conditions people voted: what they could see in the media, what pressures they were exposed to, and whether they saw state resources as public property or as an extension of the party's campaign. The exact total does not answer all questions about freedom of choice.

The new interim report from Odihr shows that the election crisis does not start with the opening of the boxes. The mission assesses that the elections are being held in an atmosphere of multi-year political crisis and deepening polarization, while important recommendations on voter pressure, misuse of public resources and independence of the media regulator remain unfulfilled. It records reports of intimidation of activists and attacks on observers, as well as concerns about the accuracy of the electoral roll. His audit is due to deliver its first report on October 28 – three days after citizens vote. The final evaluation of the election is yet to come, but the reasons for distrust are already on the table.

Popović does not consider it certain that all parts of the rebel society would react equally to defeat. Some would demand the continuation of the struggle, some considered that the result - despite the conditions, should be accepted - and some tried to find a new way of political organization. The student list brought together people of different experiences and expectations. Their agreement before the elections is not a guarantee of agreement after them.

Therefore, the second scenario would have at least two possible paths. In one, an accepted and verifiable victory of the SNS would return the political conflict to the institutions, with the continuation of the struggle for more equal conditions. In the second, a disputed victory would leave the institutions with a formal majority, and the streets with the belief that change has been prevented again.

photo: dejan ivanisevic / tanjug

THIRD SCENARIO TWO VICTORIES, ONE COUNTRY

The most unpleasant possibility is not the one in which the count is long, but the one in which the two sides claim that the count is already over and that both have won. Then the conflict is no longer only about percentages. It is about who has the right to communicate reality and who can impose it as official.

Neither Pajtić nor Popović consider this scenario to be the most likely. Pajtić expects a big enough student victory that the false declaration of SNS victory would be unsustainable. If there would still be an uncertain and disputed outcome, he sees the way out in new elections. At the same time, he warns that the new campaign, after the already accumulated violence and fear, could bring even greater repression.

Popović puts more trust in the independent verification of results and the organization of the student list. He expects that her data, together with Crta's estimates, will make it difficult for the authorities to present to the public a number that has no basis in voting. When there is enough reliable information, the space for arbitrarily declaring a winner becomes narrower.

However, this does not mean that the independent counting begins only in these elections. It existed before. The line's parallel counting methodology is based on a representative sample of polling stations and provides an estimate with a measurable margin of error. Party control collects the records through its representatives in the electoral committees.

However, Popović warns of the possibility of causing incidents before the end of the voting. In his opinion, the government could try to compromise individual polling stations if it thinks it is losing. This shifts the fight from addition to the question of whether certain votes can even be included in the total. A box that didn't make it to the count can't be defended with just a good calculator.

The third scenario can therefore arise in different ways. The result can be really tight. A significant number of polling stations may remain in dispute, or one side may refuse to accept a sufficiently clearly established defeat. Those situations call for different responses. Not every one is resolved by new elections, nor does every one end with a complaint that the institutions consider impartially.

At that moment, the role of state authorities would become crucial. Will the election administration explain its decisions or just publish already prepared conclusions? Will the courts consider the evidence? Will the police protect citizens and election materials or the political position of those who currently control it? The answers to those questions would determine whether the dispute remains in the proceedings or turns into an open conflict.

Popović does not expect that an international representative like Felipe Gonzalez in 1997 will come and solve the problem in one move. He believes that a government that would reject a clearly determined defeat would find it difficult to find external allies for such an action, but he sees no reason to expect a decisive intervention from the international community. His assessment here also depends on whether Vučić will act rationally, and we have already seen how many irrational moves he can make.

WHO WILL BE OBEYED ON MONDAY

The common point of Pajtić's and Popović's assessments is that the government does not survive only because it has functions. It survives also because enough people believe that they will still have them tomorrow. A clear electoral victory for the opponent could upset that belief. The government's narrow and disputed victory could prolong the conflict, which its apparatus can no longer resolve with the old means.

And for the citizens, the question will be simpler than all our scenarios: whether their vote can change the government and whether, after that change, the state starts working for them. If the answer again depends on the will of one man, the election will produce a winner, but it will not solve the problem that has plunged the country into deep crisis. The real test begins when the counting is over - will the losers accept departure and the winners the limits of their own power.