Page 80 - bne Magazine February 2023

80 Opinion bne February 2023
The vast majority of Serbian President Aleksander Vucic's supporters don’t see anyone as an eventual successor.
What politics after Vucic will look like is Serbia’s billion-dollar question
Ann Smith in New York
For almost a decade Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic has been the dominant political figure
in the country (even in the region) as well as its international representative. So when he makes his periodic announcements that he is going to leave politics they raise a lot of questions, in Serbia and abroad.
During those ten years, he didn’t only succeed in maintaining and increasing his power, but also in completely minimising the opposition. Vucic managed to become and remain the seemingly irreplaceable number one among his own people.
As a result, the vast majority of his supporters don’t see any of the people working with him as an eventual successor. Meanwhile, most of his opponents do not have anyone (yet) to put forward to replace him. This is a result of Vucic's continuous hard work because he is in campaign mode every day, and every day is another chance to create a crisis and solve it (uniquely and gloriously) in order to boost his popularity.
Vucic himself works hard and he works in every field. He does the job of a statesman, but he also helps ordinary people
www.bne.eu
with ordinary issues. As a statesman, he has elevated himself enough to be able to say: “L’etat, c’est moi”. By showing constantly how he also lives the life of a little man, he has come far enough to become a leader that many not only respect or support, but really love.
The ones that truly love him are mainly elderly and for them seeing the back of him is not just scary but unimaginable. Comments like these can often be heard on public transport or in public parks where pensioners sit and chat or play chess: “we are safe as long as we have him”, “we won’t be hungry while he is the president”, “there won’t be war while Vucic represents us”, “he is staying in politics because he cannot entrust us to anyone else” and so on.
Public expressions of admiration from those who work for Vucic are also quite common. Both groups are crucial for his political future.
A tricky legal question
Raising the subject of a third presidential mandate for Vucic started early — he just started his second five-year term in