Vučić promises to replace half of the mayors if he becomes prime minister — Danas raises questions of early local elections

The head of the electoral list “Aleksandar Vučić – United Serbia” declared that if he becomes prime minister, he would make “every effort so that three months after the formation of the government at least 50 percent of the mayors and municipal presidents in Serbia are replaced,” as reported by the Serbian newspaper Danas, published on 29 September 2026.

Vučić justified the promise, Danas writes, by saying that “those people did not want to listen to their fellow citizens. They thought more about themselves than about them.” However, Danas notes that the prime minister neither elects nor dismisses mayors and municipal presidents — local assemblies do that under the Law on Local Self-Government.

According to Danas’s reporting, the newspaper’s interlocutors ask by what criteria the replacements would be made, how the figure of 50 percent was reached, why they were not dismissed earlier if they were doing a bad job, and who actually proposed these people in the first place. Dalibor Jekić of the Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP), according to Danas, sees the statement as part of the campaign and asks whether the 2023 scenario of mass resignations for early local elections is being prepared. Verica Milanović of Srbija centar (SRCE) says it was Vučić himself and his party who installed these people, now spent and hated by citizens.

Political scientist Zoran Lutovac, quoted by Danas, assesses that the message to voters is “everything good is my merit, everything bad is the fault of local officials” and that the statement can also be read as a warning of new local elections packaged together with the presidential ones, the Serbian newspaper’s reporting concludes.