On Novi Sad, Political Accountability, and the Limits of a Renewed Mandate
Aleksandar Vučić resigned as president on 27 September 2026 while seeking a return to the prime minister’s office if his party forms the next government. His resignation can therefore be understood as a strategy for preserving political leadership through a change of office. His announced pursuit of the premiership lends this interpretation a concrete basis, although his return remains dependent on the election result and the formation of a government.
The Novi Sad tragedy raises distinct questions of political accountability and legal responsibility. Political accountability concerns whether the leadership answers for institutional failures and accepts the consequences of its decisions. Legal responsibility concerns who bears liability, as established through evidence and judicial proceedings.
The resignations of Goran Vesić, who held the construction, transport, and infrastructure portfolio at the time of the collapse, and Tomislav Momirović, who had previously held that portfolio, did not, by themselves, establish how responsibility for the Novi Sad disaster would be investigated or discharged. Resignation can acknowledge political responsibility without settling the facts or determining criminal liability.
A further question concerns the political response to those demanding an account. An April 2025 report in Serbian Monitor described Vučić’s allegations that foreign intelligence services were influencing the protests, alongside students’ demands for the release of reconstruction documents and the identification of those criminally responsible. Framing the protests through allegations of foreign interference directs attention toward the supposed forces behind public dissent. Whatever examination such allegations might warrant, they cannot answer demands for disclosure, independent investigation, and responsibility for the deaths. The legitimacy of those demands does not depend on protesters proving their political innocence. A government’s concern for the victims must be assessed through its willingness to enable an account of what happened, including findings that may implicate its own institutions.
Before leaving office, political accountability required more than expressions of sympathy or assurances that institutions were acting: it required a substantive public account of how the state discharged its responsibilities during the railway station’s renovation. Such an account should identify any established failures of oversight, due diligence, supervision, and public safety, while clarifying what remained under investigation. It should also explain what corrective measures had been taken and how those responsible would be held accountable through independent proceedings. Where institutional failures had been established, acknowledging them would demonstrate a willingness to answer for the exercise of public power without prejudging individual legal liability.
An election may confer a renewed mandate and impose political consequences through the ballot box, but it cannot determine legal responsibility or substitute for a substantive account of institutional failures. Neither the electoral process nor its outcome would, on its own, resolve the demands for truth, accountability, and justice arising from the Novi Sad tragedy.
A mandate authorizes the exercise of power; it does not absolve those who exercised it of the duty to answer for its consequences.