Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced last night that consultations for forming a new Serbian government will begin on Monday, Radio Free Europe (RFE) reports, BTA reports.
„We will see what those who have a majority say - whether they want to form a government or go to elections. "This is their job," Vucic stressed to Serbian broadcaster RTS.
The president added that the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SPP), of which he is a member, should propose a candidate for prime minister after making sure it has secured a majority.
When asked if he was considering a non-party figure for nomination as prime minister, Vucic replied that he had not yet thought about the issue, but he was confident that SPP leader Miloš Vučević and the party leadership were considering such an option.
Regarding the opposition's proposal for a transitional government, Vucic said that he would grant a mandate to the opposition parties as soon as they show that they have a majority – that is, 126 deputies (the Serbian parliament has 250 seats) who support such a government.
On March 19, the Serbian National Assembly 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 resigned after an attack on students in Novi Sad, where, according to them, a group of men associated with the SPP went out and chased young people with baseball bats, putting up stickers and drawing graffiti.
Some of the opposition parties in parliament announced on March 20 that they had reached a consensus on the creation of a transitional government to help the country overcome the socio-political crisis. The opposition has proposed the creation of a "government of people's trust", which would be temporary and with specific tasks for a maximum of nine months.
The protests and student blockades that continue in Serbia began after the tragedy of the collapse of the concrete canopy at the Novi Sad railway station, which killed 16 people. The protesters' main demand is that the authorities take criminal and political responsibility for the incident. The last parliamentary elections in Serbia were marked by accusations of electoral manipulation, which the ruling Serbian Progressive Party rejected as unfounded.