Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić announced that consultations on the composition of the new Serbian government will begin on Monday, March 31st.
"We will see what those who have the majority say - whether they want to form a government, or whether they want to go to elections. That is their business," Vučić told Radio Television of Serbia.
According to him, the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), of which he is a member, must come to him and propose a candidate for prime minister and say that they have secured a majority for him.
Asked if he was considering a non-partisan figure as the prime minister-designate, Vučić said that he was not considering it, but that he was sure that SNS President Miloš Vučević and the party's leadership were considering it.
"We need to see how the leadership of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) will behave, if they want to enter the coalition. Maybe they don't want to, since there are different things there," he said.
When asked about the opposition's proposal for a transitional government of popular trust, Vučić said that he would give them a mandate as soon as they tell him that they have a majority, that is, 126 MPs who support it.
"As soon as they convince me that they have 126 votes, I will give them a mandate," Vučić said.
The National Assembly of Serbia on March 19th confirmed the resignation of the Serbian government, a month and a half after Miloš Vučević resigned as prime minister at the end of January. The parliament's decision began a 30-day period for the election of a new government.
Vučević left the Serbian government after the attack on students in Novi Sad, where, according to the students in the blockade, a group of men with baseball bats ran out of the SNS premises and chased students who were putting up stickers and drawing patterns around Novi Sad.
Some parliamentary opposition parties announced on March 20 that they had reached a consensus that the formation of a transitional government was necessary for the country to emerge from the social and political crisis.
The oppositionists announced that the idea was for it to be a so-called "Government of People's Trust" which would be "a fixed-term, temporary government, lasting a maximum of nine months, with specific tasks."
Protests and student blockades have been ongoing in Serbia for months, the first demand of which is the criminal and political responsibility of the authorities for the deaths of 15 people in the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad on November 1, 2024.
The last parliamentary elections in Serbia were marked by numerous accusations against the government that it achieved victory through electoral manipulation. The ruling Serbian Progressive Party rejected such allegations as false.
Election irregularities were then pointed out by opposition representatives, domestic observers, and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
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