After a three-day debate, Serbia's parliament backed the government of prime minister Đuro Macut. The opposition tried to bring it down - and failed. So far, nothing surprising. What is surprising is what comes next: the ruling Serbian Progressive Party and Aleksandar Vučić are now working out how to align early parliamentary elections with the presidential ones.

So the government survived a confidence vote, and immediately afterwards the talk is about early elections. That is not a contradiction - that is a schedule. The vote was a formality that had to be closed before the real subject could be opened.

A chair that changes, a player who stays

Analysts assess that Vučić, once he leaves the presidency, could again take over as prime minister. The exact election date has not been set.

Who occupied the presidential chair and who the prime minister's, in that combination, matters little. The office changes, the centre of power does not. Does this look familiar from other Balkan states?

Where the vote came from

The opposition raised the confidence question in mid-April, after charges were filed against culture minister Nikola Selaković. It concerns alleged abuses linked to the proposed transfer of the damaged General Staff building to Jared Kushner's company. Kushner later withdrew from the project.

In the debate, opposition representatives described Macut's government as „a puppet administration of Aleksandar Vučić”, recalling a series of contested moments since Vučić installed the respected doctor at its head some eighteen months ago. The opposition has been demanding early elections for over a year, with no answer from the ruling coalition.

The canopy nobody forgets

Among the reasons for the no-confidence motion, the opposition also cited the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad in November 2024, in which sixteen people died. That tragedy triggered the largest wave of protests in Serbia in recent years and has since been the point every debate about accountability returns to.

Macut responded that his government should be judged by what it has achieved rather than by headlines, listing results in infrastructure, employment, security and economic stability. Infrastructure - the word that appears both in the government's defence and in the reason the opposition wants it gone.

The government stayed. Elections are coming, but nobody says when. And the sixteen people from Novi Sad are still waiting for someone to answer - which is, in the end, the only question that will outlive this parliament too.