Page 81 - bne Magazine February 2023

bne February 2023
Opinion 81
the spring of 2022. With his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) the largest party in parliament, his position is safe for the next few years.
However, thinking about the distant future is what he does (and what has kept him in power this long), and talking about the end of his political career is another common theme. According to local media, since 2017, he announced about ten times that he is resigning from the position of SNS head. He also often repeats that he is leaving politics, but he never actually says when.
The latest announcement was made during the president’s annual address to the nation on January 4, when Vucic
said: “this is my last mandate, I'm not going to change the constitution, it’s not happening... In the first half of next year, I will not even be a president of a political party.”
When the statement is carefully read, nothing actually new was said. “Last mandate” as president still doesn’t mean last political mandate. Is “next year’ the lapse that everybody makes in the first week of January when they still call the new year next year, or he is talking about 2024? He won’t lead
“a political party”, but what about coalition of parties or
a citizen movement? There are so many options to stay in politics without being president of a political party. Serbs say: “every word has a tail”. In Vucic’s case that’s indeed true.
According to the Serbian Law on the President, no one can be president more than twice. The only way to do so is through a change to the Constitution Act.
By saying he does not plan to change the constitution to extend his term, Vucic has set himself apart from leaders
“According to the Serbian Law on the President, no one can be president more than twice.
The only way to do so is through a change to the Constitution Act”
of former Soviet countries such as Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarus’ Aleksander Lukashenko, who, by changing the way the role of the president is defined in their constitutions, effectively reset the clock and allowed themselves to stand for two additional terms as president.
Should he change his mind and decide to go down this route (which can’t be ruled out), making a change to the Serbian constitution is a complex process. The first step would be
to initiate a constitutional amendment in the parliament
and obtain a two-thirds majority. Once a proposal for a constitutional change is approved, the parliament begins to work on the amendment and initiates a public debate. After this phase, the parliament again votes on the constitutional change and the votes of two-thirds of MPs are needed for approval. For some issues, including changes related to the role of the president, the parliament has to call a referendum. A constitutional amendment is considered accepted if the majority of people who vote in the referendum support it. This procedure (defined in the Article 206 in the Constitutional Act) is a long process and can take several years, which could be why Vucic has already spoken out loud about his thoughts.
At this moment, Vucic wouldn’t be able to easily secure
167 votes in the parliament (two thirds of the 250 MPs). According to the latest report of the Serbian Electoral Commission, the coalition around the SNS currently has 120 mandates. The coalition around its partner the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) adds 31. A small number of votes comes from parties of ethnic minorities, so Ana Brnabic’s SNS-led new cabinet passed parliament with 157 votes of support. However, before 2027, Serbia should hold one more round of parliamentary elections; the current parliamentary term ends in 2026, though Vucic has several times called early parliamentary elections.
When it comes to a referendum, that shouldn’t be a problem for Vucic, as his fans always vote. Supported by the SNS’s members and their families (the SNS is the largest political party in the country counting about 700,000 members), it could be an easy win over those that would bother to go and vote against. But, this still requires some work because of the anti-Vucic segment of society.
A cabinet post or ruling from the shadows
If amending the constitution is not an option for whatever reason, Vucic still has plenty of ways to stay in politics and keep ruling the country. As long as the SNS has a parliamentary majority or is able to create a coalition, Vucic will have a job — he can be prime minister, which he actually was for a couple of years before he became president. As PM, he could just continue doing what he already does with a different title.
If not PM, he can be a first deputy PM (PPV), a title
created especially for him in 2012 when the SNS formed a government with the SPS and had to give the PM position to its president Ivica Dacic (Dacic never admitted it, but sitting in that chair was understood to be his condition for leaving his previous partner the Democratic Party and joining the SNS). Vucic can be a minister (of defence, perhaps, like he was while he was PPV). As long as he is president of the SNS, he won’t be unemployed.
In this, he would follow the example of Milo Djikanovic, current president of Montenegro but permanent de facto ruler of the country since the 1990s. Djukanovic has been president of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) since before Montenegro
www.bne.eu