For the first time in nearly a decade, a Serbian media hosted a televised election debate with opposing politicians which drew significant public attention ahead of the 25 October parliamentary vote, in Serbia's highly polarised media and tense society landscape. Equally for the first time, a top official from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party appeared on N1 television in a live election debate. Ana Brnabic, Speaker of the outgoing parliament and a former prime minister, as well as top figure in Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic's political camp, faced the top candidate of the opposition Student List - Students win political platform and Dean of the Arts University in Belgrade, Mirjana Nikolic.
The two contenders agreed to appear together live, but not without hesitations, and engaged in a fiery one-on-one debate, confronting their views on education, the chosen theme of the debate, before descending into the wider Serbian society turmoil and political conflict. The N1 televised debate was the most watched programme during its time slot, with a rating of over 48 points, and the most followed television show of the past month. The N1 host invited them to present their programmes, but the contenders went into trading accusations of violence, mismanagement and intolerance which matched the heated national political discourse as the country is gearing up for early elections called after months of demonstrations and protests which led to violent incidents.
Triggered by the collapse of a concrete canopy at the Novi Sad railway station in November 2024 which killed 16 people, the protests were started by students who blocked state universities for a prolonged period of time before spreading across the country. The protesters blamed the tragedy on corruption and mismanagement. Eventually, the ad-hoc student movement registered their political list for the elections and are now seen by part of the public and by most pollsters as the main challengers to president Vucic’s rule.
The political tension was obvious even before the TV debate started, with Brnabic declaring that Nikolic would not even shake her hand when they met in the studio. I consider that to be a basic human gesture. Generals are at war with each other and still shake hands,” Brnabic said.
She asked her contender if “is that your decent Serbia?,” to which Nikolic fired back saying “decent Serbia is yet to come.” The debate sparked surprise and stirred significant interest in Serbia as government officials have largely avoided the N1 channel throughout multiple election cycles, claiming negative bias, a qualification N1 rejected. At the same time, not many expected such a programme to happen at all as real debates by political opponents are rare in Serbia, with the media openly supporting one political camp or the other and thus rarely inviting politicians or activists across the partisan lines. In turn, politicians rarely agree to take part in programmes at channels they deem to be hostile and combative.
Therefore, the debate surprised Serbia and, moreover, that it was hosted by N1 television whose editorial policy has so far been seen as consistently and openly anti-Vucic. Viewers have not seen government or ruling party officials on N1 since at least 2017. Ana Brnabic, who is in third position on Vucic's United Serbia electoral list, said she has not been on N1 since 2017, stating that “in previous election campaigns N1 would not even allow us to have paid promo clips (in their programme), that is how objective you were." "I wasn’t thrilled about coming now either, remembering how your television tried to dehumanise my friend and my president.
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