Balša Božović at the Cetinje Forum FORCE 2026: This is an opportunity Serbia must not miss,elements of Vučić’s regime live on in the region
Balša Božović, Executive Director of the Regional Academy for Democratic Development, has received a special certificate of appreciation from the Cetinje Forum FORCE 2026, which is being held this year under the theme “Beyond Borders – Geopolitics, Human Rights and Leadership in a (Dis)connected World” and brings together national and international experts from politics, academia, the international community and the media.
“After fourteen years of violence and intimidation, the elections have given Serbia an opportunity to become a free country. I am very happy about this victory and know full well how many people have paid the price of this struggle. Some fought for two years, others for all fourteen. Many risked their lives and were persecuted by the regime, while our neighbours have been waiting for a change in Belgrade’s policy for almost 40 years,” Balša Božović said.
Božović stressed that both the student movement and citizens had demanded the rule of law and that the incoming government must now be firmly supported in its efforts to establish it. He also said he was not sure whether those demanding it understood what it actually meant and recalled that the rule of law entails fighting corruption and organised crime, which means that secret files must also be opened, lustration carried out and the criminal apparatus within the BIA and military security services dismantled. He emphasised that the rule of law also entails prosecuting war crimes and that the War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office must therefore also be freed from fear, as it is the only one that has yet to start working, and that the rule of law also means respecting the judgments of international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and the UN resolution on the Srebrenica genocide. He warned that prosecutors’ offices must do their work in accordance with the law, meaning that prosecutors must examine whether Aleksandar Vučić and senior figures in his government bear criminal responsibility and that, where legal grounds exist, arrests and indictments must follow. Božović stressed that we must not forget that Vučić’s regime also killed people and that the rule of law means identifying those who ordered Oliver Ivanović’s murder and that, after 23 years, Serbia owes an answer about the political background to Zoran Đinđić’s assassination. He warned that until we closed that circle, we would not have a chance to start afresh.
Balša Božović stressed that those embarking on this struggle for reform and the prosecution of crimes must have state protection so that they can do this work effectively and without fear, and that reforms on this scale also require organised political support. He recalled that the student movement was heterogeneous and had a horizontal structure, but that we would now need a vertical structure that would responsibly support citizens’ demands for justice.
He said that free media, political pluralism and democratic oversight of the security services would give Serbia more room to resist Russian influence and conduct a more independent foreign policy, adding that the extent to which Belgrade had truly changed would also be evident in its relations with its neighbours, as relations with Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo need to be reset. He stressed that election fraud linked to voter migration must be exposed and allegations of duplicate entries in electoral registers and the organised relocation of voters investigated. This is a quick and concrete step towards beginning to restore trust.
“Vučić’s regime has fallen in Serbia. Elements of it live on in the region. I see them in Milorad Dodik and Draško Stanivuković in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Serb List in Kosovo, and in Andrija Mandić, Milan Knežević, Dritan Abazović and Vladislav Dajković in Montenegro,” Božović warned.
He added that how Serbia’s citizens would live and how safe its neighbours would be depended on how thoroughly we dismantled that criminal regime, which had fired on citizens with sonic weapons, incited political assassinations, run over young people with cars on Serbia’s streets and, through theft and corruption, taken lives beneath the canopy in Novi Sad, and said that this was why it was important for the region to support people in Serbia who were ready to carry out those reforms.
“This is an opportunity Serbia must not miss. Whether Serbia will be a civilised and European country depends on unravelling that forty-year knot through the establishment of the rule of law. That would, in fact, be ‘6 October’. Serbia’s citizens deserve it,” Božović concluded.
Cetinje, 12 November 2026
