Ivica Dačić, leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), said yesterday that after the elections, the Socialists want to discuss continuing their coalition with the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), “not with the blockaders.”
Dačić posted part of his statement to journalists on the matter on Instagram, reiterating that the party’s Main Board had decided that the SPS would run in the parliamentary elections in a pre-election coalition with United Serbia (Jedinstvena Srbija) and the Greens of Serbia (Zeleni Srbije).
“One thing is taking part in the elections, as we have always done, and another is the decision that we will continue the coalition with the SNS and hold talks after the elections, and thirdly, that there will be no cooperation with the blockaders and no support for the blockaders (…)”, he said. He was responding to a journalist’s question about the position of SPS official Branko Ružić, who said that the SPS running independently in the elections was “a good first step.”
Dačić said that the Main Board had unanimously decided that the SPS would run in the elections, as always, together with United Serbia and the Greens of Serbia.
The SPS leader also noted that at the meeting he had asked whether anyone was in favour of supporting the student “blockaders” and the opposition and that, as he put it, no one had come forward.
He also said that Ružić had not been present at that Main Board meeting and referred journalists to Aleksandar Antić, Suzana Paunović and Novica Tončev for questions about the decisions…
According to Dačić, the decisions made by the party’s Main Board were unanimous, and Ružić does not represent the position of the SPS.
The SPS has been in a coalition with the SNS for several years and is part of the Serbian government.
Some pro-government media outlets interpreted the SPS’s decision to run independently in the elections as a distancing from the SNS, while the tabloid Informer described it as a possible part of a broader political plan in which the Socialists could serve as a “Trojan horse” for the blockaders.
Source: Danas, 17.08.2026