“We need to take things step by step and not reveal all our cards. That is the strategy that has paid off,” the media team of the Students’ List tells Danas in response to questions about who will serve as ministers in their government and whether some of them are already on the students’ electoral list.
After students participating in the blockade published their electoral list and parts of their programme, the question arose as to whether the list – which many believe to be a winning one – contains the people who will follow that programme and put it into practice, or whether the public, as was the case with the composition of the list itself, will have to wait until the very last moment to learn the names of members of a possible future government.
Asked whether future ministers are among the candidates for MPs, and who will select ministers, when and according to what criteria, the Students’ List media team says that there is still time for decisions on personnel to be made, both before the government is formed and before the election.
“Given that the Government is formed 100 days after the Assembly, and that there are still more than 30 days until the election, it is clear that there is time to make decisions regarding personnel. Naturally, we already have people in consideration, as well as a number of experts both on and outside the list who have so far worked on the programme and provided assistance,” the students’ media team says in a written statement.
As they emphasise, “we need to take things step by step and not reveal all our cards, which has been our strategy from the beginning and has paid off.”
Nebojša Petković, a member of the Ne damo Jadar (We Will Not Give Up Jadar) association, tells Danas that the ministers will be decided by those who nominated the candidates on the list.
In his view, the list is well balanced, ideologically neutral and perhaps “the most professionally qualified” in the history of our electoral cycles.
“Most of the future Government will certainly be on it, but that will ultimately be decided by those who nominated them. They are, for the most part, competent and accomplished people in their respective fields, and we are also fighting to ensure that ministers are people who have expertise in the areas for which they are responsible,” he says.
Milomir Mandić, a researcher at Demostat, is not sure how the students will proceed, however.
Speaking to Danas, he says that he sees the document Students’ Plan primarily as an expression of general intentions and as an indication of a particular political direction.
“The document identifies problems in the judiciary and the media, but at this stage it seems to function more as a list of proclaimed objectives. For this to become a serious political programme, it is necessary to translate these general intentions into concrete legislative proposals, more thoroughly elaborated, as well as into detailed and operational plans,” he points out.
According to him, the student movement has from the outset functioned as a depersonalised organisation, and he believes that this will remain the case until the election.
“Our political culture is not very familiar with such leaderless organisational models, which is why the person at the top of the list always attracts attention and consequently receives the most media coverage. I do not know whether the student movement will decide, before the election, to promote the names of potential candidates for prime minister and ministers, but what is certain is that those names do not necessarily have to be on the parliamentary list,” Mandić says.
Asked whether the public should at least know the name of someone to whom the students would entrust a ministerial post, retired University of Belgrade professor Žarko Korać responds by highlighting the difference between these elections and all elections held since December 1990 – and, as he puts it, all the elections Serbia has had in its history.
Korać describes the authorities’ aggressive manipulation of the majority of the media outlets they control as having reached an almost incomprehensible level, with the programmes of private television channels being interrupted every hour to report on what Vučić is doing at that particular moment.
“But on the other hand, the Students’ List, which was formed by student plenums at the faculties, will mean that the elected MPs will be unknown to one another. Who will determine their political activities, and who, for example, will be the parliamentary group leader? That is also the answer to the question that has been asked.
“If the Students’ List, either on its own or with the help of another party in parliament, forms a majority – and even if it has a majority of its own – who will determine the composition, structure and programme of the Government? Who is that person or group of people?” Korać asks.
He adds that he supports a victory for the Students’ List, but says that he does not find the campaign of enormous pressure on other parties wishing to participate in the elections alongside it – particularly the EU List – to withdraw at all appealing.
“They are natural allies for a post-election coalition. But it seems to me that the aim of the Students’ List is not merely, but exclusively, the defeat of the SNS. Only after that will many questions that are currently being suppressed come fully to the fore.
“The students deserve considerable credit for reviving opposition energy in Serbia. They have awakened people and restored their hope that change is possible. But the group they have assembled is primarily a group aimed at defeating the SNS. It appears that, at this moment, this is the only thing that is possible,” Korać concludes.
It should also be noted that representatives of the other submitted electoral lists have not commented on their prospective ministers, with the exception of Aleksandar Vučić, the candidate for prime minister on the United Serbia list, who has announced that he intends to form the smallest government, consisting of 13 members.
(Danas, 23.09.2026)
https://www.danas.rs/vesti/politika/studenstka-lista-vlada-ministri/