President Aleksandar Vučić has resigned from his post as the Serbian President at a press conference organised at the Presidency, stating that he is doing so in order to take part in the ongoing electoral campaign without holding office.
On that occasion, he said that on the penultimate day of his mandate he had pardoned 49 individuals, 23 of whom are connected to the protests that have been ongoing for nearly two years, and that despite the opinion of the security services, he pardoned 12 individuals from the Novi Sad group. The remaining 11 individuals he pardoned are people who took part in incidents against the “blockaders”.
He also said that as early as tomorrow morning he would hand over duties to the President of Parliament, Ana Brnabić, who will serve as acting President of the Republic, and that the first round of the presidential elections must be held by the end of December. He once again dismissed claims that a “sound cannon” was used and that he was involved in the Jovanjica affair.
Before tendering his resignation, he rejected claims that this “shortens his mandate”, and that the presidential office in Serbia is won in direct elections “without political calculations”.
Vučić said that he would respond to the invitation of Radio Television of Serbia, and that his potential interlocutors from the Student List and the CRTA organisation are “brave only when they need to go to the Bundestag, but dare not say it to the face of the person they consider most responsible (for the poor state of the country)”, namely him. He also assessed that his potential interlocutors “have no arguments whatsoever”, and regarding CRTA’s refusal to take part in the debate on the grounds that they are observers and not participants in the electoral race, he said that now, since he is no longer president, he can tell that civil society organisation “shame on you” because they were “the main participants of the colour revolution”.
When asked by a journalist why he pardoned people whom he had claimed were working on a coup d’état, Vučić said that he still thinks “the worst of them because they planned to take over state institutions”, but that the pardon and remission are acts of mercy which he undertook “because of their age and because he knows they would be sentenced to multi-year prison terms in any state”.
Vučić said that whoever wins the trust of voters in the upcoming elections on 25 October must safeguard “peace and stability, while protecting Serbia’s national interests”, above all protecting “our people in Kosovo”.
He said that during that period Serbia “failed the most exams” in the sphere of education, that the government too had made “terrible mistakes that will cost us in the decades to come”, for which he blamed the politicisation of educational institutions. He also said that, whoever wins the upcoming elections, they should not listen to those who will try to advise them to give up Kosovo.
Speaking about the years of his rule, Vučić mostly spoke about economic results, adding that whoever wins the upcoming elections must continue with economic development, “above all taking care of innovations, artificial intelligence and robots”.
He said that in 2012 the unemployment rate was 25.9 per cent, and the youth unemployment rate was 54 per cent, that the exchange rate of the dinar “was different every morning”, and that 500,000 jobs disappeared within three or four years after the Global Financial Crisis.
“When I (came to power), the ratio of public debt to gross domestic product was 79 per cent; today we are a low-debt country, twice lower than the most developed EU countries, where the average is 84 or 85 per cent… I am particularly proud of over 300 factories and plants that were opened during (my) mandates… Even though Serbia has half a million fewer people, it has more formally employed people than it did in 2012,” added the erstwhile President of Serbia.
He also added that Serbia cannot catch up in a few years with states that “are 500 or 600 years ahead of Serbia”, such as Germany.
Vučić also announced that as of tomorrow he will be “everywhere in Serbia, in countless places during a single day, (so as to) listen to the people, to see if he can change himself as well and if they can change something for the better”.
According to the Constitution of Serbia, the function of the president will now be taken over by the Speaker of the National Assembly, Ana Brnabić. According to the Constitution of Serbia, the presidential elections must be held three months from the day of submitting the resignation.
Vučić announced earlier today that he would make a decision on the pardon and remission of certain persons for events over the past year and a half, without specifying who this would refer to. He also said that he is pursuing a strategy of quiet presidential elections and added “that this should have been clear to everyone six months ago”.
This strategy represents a political-technological model in which the campaign for the head of state is conducted indirectly, in the shadow of other electoral processes or through an incumbent campaign from another position, so as to reduce opposition mobilisation, amortise public pressure and ensure a controlled transition of power.
He stated that there will be more than a month from the end of the parliamentary elections to the calling of the presidential ones, because the campaign for them is shorter.
(N1, 27.09.2026)
https://n1info.rs/vesti/vucic-predsednik-ostavka/