Aleksandar Vučić has said he is "ready to accept the will" of the ruling SNS regarding a possible candidacy for prime minister. Early elections, he says, will be called on 9 or 10 September. He is waiting for the party's decision after the Main Board session in Niš.

The formulation is as old as the practice in this region. Nobody seeks a post - a post is accepted, with a heavy sigh, as an obligation to a party that insists. Vučić formally stepped down from the SNS leadership in May 2023 and handed the party to Miloš Vučević. Since then he does "not lead" the party whose will he will now respect.

The constitution as a seating plan

The reason for the whole operation is simple: Vučić is finishing his second presidential term, and Serbia's constitution does not allow him a third. So the post changes, not the holder. That is not new in Serbia, or in the Balkans. What is new is only the openness with which it is announced.

The second announcement is more interesting. Vučić says the future government should have at most 12 ministers - by his account, the smallest government in Serbia's history, but "fast, efficient and strong". This is worth pausing on. Twelve ministries means merging portfolios, which means fewer people deciding on larger areas. That can be efficiency. It can also be concentration. The difference is shown not by the number, but by who holds the merged portfolios.

A campaign that did not start yesterday

Vučić has been campaigning for days by announcing early elections, even though they have not formally been called. In our region that is a familiar figure: elections are run as though they were permanently under way, and the date is merely administrative confirmation of something that has been happening for a long time.

It is worth noting what is running in parallel. In the same week Serbia is organising state honours for the convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić, with a commemoration in Belgrade and a burial at Topčider. A pre-election week and a national mobilisation fall on the same days. That in itself does not prove calculation - but the campaign certainly is not starting on an empty stage.

The question left for voters in Serbia is not whether Vučić will become prime minister. That looks settled already. The question is what concretely changes in their lives when the same man sits down in a different chair, with a government compressed into twelve portfolios.