Serbian opposition politician Cedomir Stojkovic has made a public appeal to Serbs in Kosovo, urging them not to vote for the Serbian List in the upcoming local elections scheduled for October 12.

According to Stojkovic, the Serbian List no longer represents the interests of the Serbian community, but rather serves as a tool of Aleksandar Vucic’s regime, used to maintain political control even outside Serbia’s territory, KosovaPress reports.

He also announced that starting from September, large protests will be organized in Serbia against the current regime.

In its last session, the Central Election Commission did not certify the Serbian List to participate in these elections. However, the Election Complaints and Appeals Panel returned this decision for review. Following this, two members of the Central Election Commission from Vetëvendosje appealed to the Supreme Court, which announced yesterday that it had dismissed the appeal as inadmissible.

Serbian lawyer Stojkovic called on Serbs in Kosovo to abandon the Serbian List, otherwise stressing that they would be abandoned by Serbia itself.

“Serbs in Kosovo must know that if they choose the Serbian List, they will be abandoned by Serbia. There will be no connection with the new government, there will be no connection with the future politics of Serbia. If they choose Serbian List, they choose criminals, corrupt people, Vucic’s puppets, and we in Belgrade will not tolerate this. If they choose to stay with the criminals, then they are the same as them. My message to them is: leave the Serbian List to sink together with Vucic, and choose normal people who want normal relations with Kosovo and normal relations with Belgrade,” Stojkovic emphasized.

The Serbian politician stressed that the current Serbian regime under the leadership of President Aleksandar Vucic is trying to regain control over the state and its citizens.

Starting in September, Stojkovic announced mass protests against the Serbian regime.

“The situation is exactly as I expected, because the regime is already failed— the regime does not control Serbia anymore and regime tries to regain control over the state and citizens. And because of that, Vucic is now using every force he has in his hand in order to stop protests, to stop and to plant a fear among citizens, so that out of fear they stop protesting. But this will not happen… He knows everything will escalate, that we will have a huge demonstration from September when people return and send their children back to school. From that point on, we will have huge protests and big escalation and clashes with Vucic's forces. Vucic knows this and is now trying to prevent it by planting fear among citizens,” the Serbian lawyer said.

In an interview for KosovaPress, the Serbian politician underlined that, seeing the strength of the people against Vucic, everything within the ruling party is collapsing.

The Serbian lawyer said that Vucic no longer enjoys popular support, only that of hooligans, criminals, and terrorists.

“If we see Andrej Vucic on the streets, that means that regime is in big trouble. And now he sent the biggest faces of the regime on the street in order to keep their loyalists in discipline, because from the beginning, Vucic rules with the force and with the blackmails. This is how he managed to get thousands of members of his party because people were frightened, people were under the force, people were blackmailed, and in that situation from the moment when when somebody else shows the bigger force, the system of Vucic is in collapse, and now everybody who was forced to be the member of his party now, they see the bigger force, and that is the people of Serbia. They are bigger force, and because of that, everything now in the ruling party is collapsing. So in that situation, Vucic sends his most favorable people and the most important people like his brother, who is actually his deputy, defacto deputy, and he sent him to street to try to regain discipline among their loyalists. But now, nobody wants to be the part of the ruling party. Nobody wants to support them. Nobody wants to go on the street to fight for them instead, Vucic is forced to pay hooligans, criminals and some terrorists also in some effort to show that he has some support. There is no support for Vucic, there is only paid hooligans, criminals and terrorists,” he stressed.

Serbian politician Cedomir Stojkovic called Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic a liar. According to him, Vucic tries to calm the people by saying, “I will leave power within a year,” but as Stojkovic put it, this is a lie.

“The first thing I learned decades ago is that I do not trust a liar. Vucic is a liar, and any normal person should not trust him. Everything he says is a lie, and he aims with these lies to calm the people, telling them ‘be cool, I will be gone one year from now, chill out, don't make trouble and I will leave power one year from now.’ But this is a lie, and no one trusts him,” he said.

The Serbian politician also emphasized that the West is involved in the protests in Serbia. He stressed that the Serbian people want to live like in Western states, not in Vucic’s way.

“The West is very deeply involved in the protests in Serbia, because the West is the good part of the world. The West has rule of law, the West has good standards… The West is deeply involved, because, you know, we’ve seen Hollywood movies, we’ve seen how people live in France, in the UK, in Germany, and we see that this is better, and that in Serbia it is bad. That’s why we make the choice that we want to live that way; we don’t want to live in Vucic’s way,” Stojkovic declared.

According to him, Serbian President Vucic built his political career on nationalism and fueling interethnic divisions.

He pointed out that, in panic from losing power, Vucic is trying to divert public attention by creating tensions.

“Aleksandar Vucic is a nationalist, and from the beginning of his political career he climbed on the political power by creating hatred and hostility among nations. That is how he became a politician. Now, in panic from losing power, he is trying to shift public attention to something else. He tried to create a conflict between Bosniaks and Serbs in southern Serbia, but this failed — instead, Bosniaks and Serbs united against him,” he said.

He also referred to the arrest of former KLA soldiers, saying Vucic presented it in the media as if something dangerous was happening, to tell the Serbian people: “Don’t fight against me, fight against the Albanians, they are the real threat.”

Video “Everything you see on the street now, all those who allegedly support Vucic, they don’t really support him — they are there because of the money. In recent years, he has given hooligans and fan group leaders public contracts worth millions of euros, making them very rich. They now defend his power only for money. Others get paid cash for every day they are out on the streets. So what we see are not his supporters, but the people he pays,” he said.