Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won parliamentary elections last year with a landslide victory, but it has been regularly accused of corruption and has recently come under increased pressure following mass protests following two shootings.
Although he is no longer party leader, Vucic will remain the president of Serbia and the country’s most influential politician – just as he did when he resigned as prime minister to become president in 2017.
The 53-year-old, head of the SNS since 2012, said he would not leave the party he helped found.
“Whatever you do, I will always be with you and by your side,” Vucic told party members during a televised congress.
“I just think that a slightly different approach is needed to unite a larger number of forces of those who want to fight for the victory of a patriotic and prosperous Serbia.”
Plans for a new movement
Vucic has already announced his intention to form a national movement that should include prominent intellectuals, artists and other public figures, and that should gradually combine with the SNS.
Analysts say Vucic is significantly more popular than his party, which is regularly the target of corruption accusations, and a new coalition would help rebrand the party, avoiding poor electoral results in the future.
“This is a way to overcome a crisis that could potentially develop within the Serbian Progressive Party,” Bojan Klacar, director of independent election observer CESID, told AFP.
“By creating a new movement, he wants to secure a new mandate in power,” Klacar added.
Vucic’s opponents accuse him of relying increasingly on autocratic measures to keep the opposition in disarray and to keep media and state institutions under his thumb.
Vucic’s ruling party has also come under increasing pressure over the past month, after back-to-back shootings sparked a mass movement against the government that brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets.
Defense Minister Milos Vucevic, the former mayor of Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, was elected the new president of the SNS party and immediately pushed back the protesters.
The new SNS leader rejected the demand of some protesters calling for a transitional government before new elections, saying the government cannot be elected “in the streets and through violence”.