Jovo Bakić

He belonged to Serbian Left, the Social Democratic Union and the Party of the Radical Left between 2015 and 2021 and has been independent since. He was 76th on the Student List – Students Win, which won the most votes in the Serbian parliamentary election of 25 October 2026.

Career

Bakić graduated from the Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy in 1996, became an assistant in sociology of politics there in 1998, took a master's degree in 2002 and a doctorate in 2009 on interpretations of Yugoslavia's break-up, and specialised at Oxford, Helsinki and Amherst. He studies nations and nationalism, Yugoslav ideologies and the far right; his books include works on Yugoslavism (2004), Yugoslavia's destruction (2011) and the European far right since 1945 (2019). In 2015 he helped shape the programme of Borko Stefanović's Serbian Left but split with him over strategy; he joined the Social Democratic Union in 2019, led its merger into the Party of the Radical Left, and left that party in 2021. He was among the first Student List candidates presented in Novi Sad on 10 September 2026, saying he had first been vetoed by student plenums and then reinstated.

Positions

A Danas columnist called him in 2023 a leading sociologist of the left. For Serbian Left he argued for a movement based on secularism, democracy, anti-capitalism, internationalism and opposition to NATO expansion (Wikipedia). Since the canopy collapse he has spoken at rallies across Serbia, calling the state hijacked and pledging that those responsible would face trial. In September 2025 he told Vreme that a second opposition list beside the students' might help win a more convincing victory over the regime, and that organised crime could be defeated if there was the will.

Controversies

After a June 2019 NIN interview, President Aleksandar Vučić called for a criminal investigation; police opened a preliminary inquiry and shelved it once Bakić handed over the interview, according to PEN International. In 2023 Pink TV aired a clip that PEN says quoted him out of context as stoking violence; Prime Minister Ana Brnabić urged the University of Belgrade to respond and an SNS MP petitioned for his dismissal. In 2024 minister Milica Đurđević Stamenkovski called him an extremist. In July 2025 he said he had received threats after local SNS officials posted his phone number and address (N1). On 14 September 2026 Vučić said that in a normal country Bakić would be absolutely nothing (Večernje novosti).

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · PEN International · N1 · Vreme · Danas · Večernje novosti

Photo: Medija centar Beograd, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)