Branimir Nestorović on election night
Photo: FoNet
The movement “We, the Voice from the People” is one of the biggest surprises of the parliamentary and local elections. On election night, its leader Branimir Nestorović said he would not enter a coalition with anyone. Nevertheless, he later stated for pro-government Novosti that minority support to the current SNS-SPS administration in Belgrade for “specific projects” is possible, opening the door for cooperation.
According to preliminary results, the movement won 4.7% of votes in the parliamentary election and will enter the Serbian parliament. In the local election in the capital Belgrade, it won an even better result – 5.3%.
According to the projection of allocation of mandates in the Belgrade Assembly, the movement is in the position of a kingmaker. The current SNS-SPS administration is lacking at least one seat, having won 54 or 55 out of 110 mandates.
“We, The Voice of the People” is a group of citizens, not a political party. It submitted its signatures for the parliamentary elections just before the expiration of the legal deadline, and its campaign was primarily based on social media.
The movement is led by Branimir Nestorović (69), a famous and equally controversial Serbian doctor, who gained particular visibility in the general public during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nestorović was initially part of the medical team of advisers to the Government of Serbia. In February 2020, he famously downplayed the seriousness of the situation, saying that “coronavirus is the funniest virus in the history of mankind” and said that citizens can travel freely “to shopping in Milan”. Italy was one of the countries most severely hit by the virus at the time.
Nestorović soon left this position and profiled himself as one of the sharpest critics of the anti-coronavirus policy. He has consistently disputed the seriousness of the pandemic and has often promoted narratives described as conspiracy theories, including those undermining confidence in vaccination.
During the following years, Nestorović became known for highly-viewed guest appearances on conspiracy-promoting YouTube channels. At the same time, he was a frequent guest on highly watched pro-government television channels. Politically, he has expressed strongly anti-Western views, but has also had bizarre takes on the wider social and scientific issues.
Some of the more famous statements of Nestorović in recent years were that people with blue and green eyes are descendants of aliens from Mars and that time travel is possible through space-time portals discovered by NASA. He also flirted with the flat-earth theory.
On the electoral list, Nestorović gathered numerous promoters of anti-globalist, conservative, pro-Russian and conspiracy worldviews. Many of them, such as Siniša Ljepojević, Aleksandar Pavić, Mitar Kovač and Jovan Janjić are regular columnists and guests on pro-regime and pro-Russian media, such as Happy, Russia Today, and Sputnik, as well as popular conspiracy-oriented YouTube channels such as Balkan Info.
The movement profiled itself as an open anti-system group, which, according to early interpretations, attracted mainly disillusioned voters from the right part of the political spectrum. During the campaign, they generally did not criticize government on the issues related to corruption and authoritarianism, which was the primary message of the “Serbia Against Violence” coalition. They often dealt with global geopolitical topics that were not directly related to current local problems, which were the focus of other political parties.
