Students Propose Aleksandar Cupic as Parliament Speaker
A document from the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering lists assistant professor Aleksandar Cupic as its pick for National Assembly speaker. He says to wait for the students.
Students of the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering at the University of Belgrade have proposed Dr. Aleksandar Cupic, an assistant professor, for speaker of the National Assembly of Serbia. The story comes from Nova, which reported at 4:09 p.m. on November 9 that it had seen a faculty document. It is the first concrete name publicly linked to the post ahead of the inaugural session, set for Tuesday, November 17.
The final decision, however, has not been made by the faculties. The student movement will announce the candidate for speaker. Until then, the faculties send in proposals, and a vote follows.
What does the Faculty of Transport document say?
According to Nova, the document states that “the plenum is currently voting on the method of choosing parliamentary posts and forming the Government.” Elsewhere in the same document it reads: “Proposal for Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia: Prof. Aleksandar Cupic.” His professional biography is attached to the proposal.
Cupic is number 51 on the “Student List - Students Win” ticket. He holds a doctorate and has worked at the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering for more than two decades, in postal traffic, transport networks and information technology. He defended his doctoral dissertation, on designing transport networks with evolutionary computing, on December 25, 2014.
The public knows him for other things as well. At a Student List rally in Surcin he sang his own take on the folk song “Hajde Jano,” and earlier he and his family hosted students who were walking to Kragujevac. He lives in Sopot, where he and his family run a farm, and he is the father of six.
What does Cupic himself say?
Nova asked him to comment on his students’ proposal. His answer was brief:
“The students will state who the candidate is once they make the final decision. I am not familiar with the proposals, so I cannot comment on the post in question. It is best that we wait for the students.”
So the proposal exists in the faculty’s document, but the candidate neither confirms nor denies it. The media team of the Student List and the student movement declined to tell Danas who the candidate for speaker will be or whether they will call consultations.
Is there another name?
Nova also reports, unofficially, a second name: Katarina Scepanovic, a longtime teacher at the Philological Gymnasium. The source of that information is not given, and there is no statement from Scepanovic. For now, then, Cupic can be tied only to one faculty’s proposal, not to a decision by the movement.
In our earlier article we reported Dejan Soskic’s claim that the Student List’s candidate for speaker had been agreed, but without a name. On Sunday, on the show “Utisak nedelje,” Soskic said the student movement would announce the candidate and that after the Assembly is constituted “things will start to speed up.” On the relationship between the list and the movement, he said:
“The students know that this group of elected people from the student list who will enter Parliament becomes the owner of the mandates under the letter of the law, and decides independently. We will be entering a normal political process.”
What is on the agenda on November 17?
The inaugural session starts at 10 a.m. and has six agenda items: confirming the mandates of members of parliament, electing the speaker and deputy speakers, appointing the secretary general, electing members of parliamentary committees, and electing standing parliamentary delegations to international institutions. Until a speaker is elected, the session is chaired by the oldest member of parliament, Stojan Radenovic of the “United Serbia - Aleksandar Vucic” list.
Electing a speaker takes a majority of 126 deputies, and the Student List holds 140 seats. The arithmetic is simple, but the question of deputy speakers remains open. Outgoing Speaker Ana Brnabic, who is serving in a caretaker mandate, said that nobody representing the Student List has contacted Assembly staff to discuss the session. On deputy speakers she said:
“Until now, the ruling majority has always offered deputy speaker posts to the opposition, and depending on the opposition groups it was decided whether there would be five or six deputy speakers, that was mostly how it went, but this should be discussed before the inaugural session.”
Former member of parliament Miroslav Alekic, president of the People’s Movement of Serbia, told Danas that Brnabic herself should call consultations, since she still heads the Assembly in a caretaker mandate, and that Student List representatives cannot do so until their mandates are confirmed. With a week to go before the session, it will become clear whether the candidate’s name is known before it or only in the chamber.
