The Plenum Problem: Who Will Really Govern Serbia?

Who do I call if I want to speak to Belgrade?

Serbia’s Student List has won 140 seats in the 250-member parliament. It has secured an absolute majority and, with it, the responsibility of demonstrating that a movement born in protest can actually govern a country.

And here we arrive at a question that may prove considerably more consequential than the identity of Serbia’s next prime minister.

Who, precisely, will be running the show?

The prime minister, vested with constitutional authority to govern? Or the student plenums, whose collective decisions have shaped the movement and its parliamentary representation?

And if the two disagree, who has the final word?

The plenum is a political entity, but it is not a political party.

In the run-up to Election Night, the student plenums appeared to exercise decisive influence over the selection of candidates placed on the Student List. They selected the people who would seek public office. But now that the election is over and the transition of power has begun, the public has been offered remarkably little transparency about how this arrangement is supposed to function.

Who coordinates the movement’s political activities? Who makes its decisions? And, more importantly, who will direct the activities of its representatives in the National Assembly?

This is the fundamental problem of institutionalizing a protest movement.

So what, precisely, is the relationship between those who secured the electoral mandate and those who selected them?

A university assembly can debate a motion for hours. Its members can argue, reconsider, demand another vote and, if they wish, spend the entire afternoon discussing whether to adjourn for lunch.

A prime minister confronting a national security emergency has no such luxury.

A foreign minister cannot put an international crisis on hold while the plenums establish a quorum. Nor can a defense minister wait for the university assemblies to reach a consensus before responding to an immediate threat.

And when the telephone rings at 3 a.m., somebody must have the authority to pick it up.

Not to convene another meeting. Not to consult an invisible committee.

To make a decision. And to take responsibility for it.

Who makes the decision in Serbia?

Student List lead candidate Ilija Srdanović has said that government appointments will be determined by the parliamentary majority in accordance with Serbian law.

But stating the constitutional procedure is not the same as explaining who will exercise political power.

Given the collective machinery that produced the Student List, and the apparent relationship between the plenums and the candidates they selected, one cannot escape a rather awkward question.

Is Serbia about to acquire a government whose elected representatives are, in practice, proxies for a political entity operating outside the country’s constitutional institutions?

Who, in other words, will actually run Serbia?

Once the government is formed, who will make its decisions? Who will coordinate policy? And who will have the authority to overrule whom?

The student movement has built much of its political identity around collective decision-making and accountability to the movement that produced the Student List.

But words such as “oversight” and “accountability” can mean very different things, depending on who is doing the overseeing and who is being held accountable.

And already, the transition has produced a deeply troubling episode.

On October 26, protesters entered the premises of Informer, interrupted its broadcast and surrounded editor-in-chief Dragan Vucicevic. Some demanded his arrest.

Whatever one thinks of Informer or its political loyalties, a newsroom is not a legitimate target for political intimidation.

During the confrontation, Vucicevic telephoned Srdanovic and asked him to intervene. Srdanovic said he needed to verify what was happening. The Student List leader also explained that he was having dinner.

It was the sort of exchange that might have wandered out of a Monty Python sketch, except that there was nothing remotely amusing about the circumstances.

Srdanovic subsequently appealed for calm and urged supporters to refrain from violence. But the episode raises a serious question about the speed and clarity of political leadership during an unfolding crisis.

What happens when the next emergency is not a confrontation at a television station but a matter of national security?

How quickly can the country’s incoming leaders establish the facts, communicate their position and coordinate an effective response?

There is a broader question here about political violence and the selective application of democratic principles.

The United States learned from January 6 that an electoral grievance, however passionately held, provides no justification for forcing one’s way into a democratic institution. The same principle should apply to newsrooms, regardless of which side of the political divide their editors happen to occupy.

It would also be worth asking European officials and parliamentarians who expressed concerns about possible post-election unrest whether they have applied the same standards to violence directed against a broadcaster associated with the defeated political establishment.

Freedom of the press cannot become a privilege reserved for journalists whose politics happen to be fashionable. Nor should the language of revolutionary justice become an excuse for political retribution.

Which brings us back to those reassuring words: oversight and accountability.

Who defines them? Who enforces them? And what prevents them from being invoked to justify pressure against political opponents?

The plenum presents an institutional puzzle of its own.

It is not a registered political party operating under the familiar structures of party leadership and parliamentary discipline. Its legitimacy derives from assemblies and collective participation. Yet the public still needs to know who exercises authority within that arrangement.

Who sits in the plenums? Who establishes their agendas? Who determines voting eligibility? Who coordinates the decisions of separate universities? And who has the authority to communicate a binding political instruction to the people elected to parliament?

Will their deliberations be livestreamed? Will minutes and voting records be published? Will citizens know which delegates supported a decision and which opposed it?

Or will Serbia be expected to accept an arrangement in which political instructions emerge from a collective body without the public being able to identify precisely who made them?

A movement may choose collective leadership. A constitutional government, however, must exercise power through institutions whose authority can be identified and scrutinized.

Will the prime minister govern under the authority conferred by Serbia’s Constitution? Will ministers be free to exercise their statutory responsibilities? Or will important government decisions require political approval from the plenums?

Will the plenums be advisers? Political partners? A mechanism for holding elected representatives accountable? Or the ultimate arbiters of government policy?

And if the prime minister and the plenums disagree, who wins?

These questions go to the very heart of the matter: where does political authority actually reside, and who can the Serbian people hold responsible for its exercise?

Who oversees the people overseeing the government?

Serbia’s Constitution is clear on the matter of who governs.

The government answers to the National Assembly. The prime minister directs and coordinates its work. Ministers exercise powers conferred upon them by law. Parliament scrutinizes the executive, and voters, ultimately, pass judgment on those they have elected.

So far, so straightforward.

But what happens if, somewhere outside parliament and the Cabinet, a student plenum is effectively directing the decisions of those constitutionally entrusted with running the country?

Who, then, oversees the overseers?

Can parliament summon members of the plenum for questioning? Can voters remove them from positions of political influence? Can journalists scrutinize their deliberations? Will the public know who voted for a particular decision, who opposed it and who ultimately gave the instructions?

And when something goes spectacularly wrong, as things occasionally do in government, who takes responsibility?

The minister whose signature appears on the document? The prime minister who formally approved it? Or some collective body whose members may never have stood for election, let alone held public office?

Here lies the constitutional conundrum.

Consultation is one thing. Political accountability is another. But the emergence of a parallel center of political authority, operating beyond the established institutions of the state, presents an altogether different proposition.

Serbia could find itself with a government constitutionally accountable to parliament but politically answerable to a collective whose membership, decision-making procedures and authority remain largely opaque to the public.

The 3 a.m. test

Now imagine Serbia’s next prime minister being awakened at three o’clock in the morning.

There is a national security emergency. Or a diplomatic crisis. Or a disruption to energy supplies. Perhaps a foreign government needs an immediate answer on a matter of considerable consequence.

The telephone is ringing. The clock is ticking.

Who makes the decision?

Does the prime minister convene the Cabinet? Does the foreign minister make a recommendation? Does the decision require parliamentary authorization?

Or must somebody first consult the student plenums?

And if so, which plenum? The one in Belgrade? The one in Novi Sad? All of them?

Who convenes the meeting? Who establishes a quorum? Who counts the votes? And what happens if the prime minister believes one course of action is necessary while the plenums insist upon another?

Does the prime minister have the authority to proceed? Or must the government wait until the collective has reached a decision?

This is where the theory of collective decision-making collides with the practical responsibilities of governing a sovereign state.

Serbia’s Constitution places executive power in the Government, gives the Government responsibility for establishing and pursuing policy, and provides that the prime minister manages and directs its work. The Government, in turn, is accountable to the National Assembly.

The Student List has won the parliamentary majority required to form a government. But the authority to govern comes with constitutional responsibilities that cannot simply be transferred, informally and invisibly, to a collective operating outside the institutions of the state.

And if the plenums are to retain political control over elected representatives, the public is entitled to know precisely how that arrangement will work.

Who issues instructions? Who can refuse them? And whose decision prevails when the two sides disagree?

And when the telephone rings at three in the morning, the answer cannot be that the plenums are still debating.

Who do I call if I want to speak to Belgrade?

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