Rasim Ljajić: “We belong to neither of the two blocs” — aiming for 5-6 seats that will decide the next government

In a wide-ranging interview with the newspaper Danas, published on September 29, Rasim Ljajić, leader of the “Rasim Ljajić – Ljudski” electoral list made up of the Sandžak Democratic Party (SDP) and the Montenegrin Democratic Party (CDP), declared that they belong to neither of the two political blocs: “Nikome se nismo obećali i ničiji privezak nismo” — we have promised ourselves to no one and we are no one’s appendage, he said, as quoted by Danas.

Ljajić described the October 25 snap parliamentary elections as “prelomne” — a turning point: Serbia’s political map will change completely after them, while “almost 80 percent of the parties so far will disappear from the political scene,” he said, adding that new parties will most likely emerge from the ranks of the Student List. According to him, “never in Serbia has there been such a state, not even in the ’90s” — political differences have literally turned into hostility, and he expressed fear about how the campaign, election day and the days after will go.

The main goal of his list, according to the interview, is winning five to six parliamentary seats that would be decisive in forming the future parliamentary majority — on condition that dialogue begins between the government and the opposition, not ministerial posts. Ljajić revealed that he himself is not on the list — one of his conditions for leading it: “I have never been an MP, nor do I intend to be now,” he is quoted by Danas as saying, while stressing that the list is multiethnic, which is precisely why the coalition with the Montenegrin party was formed.

He dismissed accusations that he is running independently in the elections in a deal with the SNS to take votes from the Student List: “Am I the one who brought the SNS to power?” — he asked, recalling that during consultations with political parties he had also told Vučić that elections in this atmosphere would solve nothing without a prior government-opposition dialogue on electoral conditions. “I fear we will turn polling stations into battlefields,” Ljajić said, recalling a past tragic incident in Sandžak where one activist killed another after an election-day quarrel — an event that, as he said, “will haunt him as long as he lives.”