EditVučić government revives “Vojvodina question” to portray opponents as anti-Serbian
Authorities seize on opposition’s Vojvodina tour plans and staged +384 graffiti to inflame separatist accusations
Over the past few days, Aleksandar Vučić’s government has revisited a familiar strategy – reviving the “Vojvodina question” to portray its opponents as anti-Serbian and itself as the country’s patriotic force. The authorities capitalised on a rather hasty announcement by the Platform for a European Serbia, an initiative of four opposition parties, and started inflaming tensions and falsely accusing part of the opposition of promoting Vojvodina’s secession and the break-up of Serbia.
Dialing code
On 23 July, the same piece of graffiti appeared at numerous locations across Novi Sad – the number +384 crossed out. The unassigned international dialing code was sprayed in black and crossed out in red. According to eyewitnesses, masked young men painted the graffiti on pavements, buildings and fences. Even though the Vučić government denied being behind it, there is little doubt that it was the only political actor to benefit from it. A social media post by the Serbian speaker, Ana Brnabić, shortly before the graffiti appeared, also suggests that it was an organised government operation.
FOTO: Po Novom Sadu ispisani grafiti precrtanog broja 384 – pozivni koji se povezivao sa Vojvodinom https://t.co/3AsHsJXm9G
— Radio 021 (@Radio021) July 23, 2026
The League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, long regarded as the principal political force advocating greater autonomy for the province, accused the Serbian Progressive Party of attempting to manufacture political tensions and divert attention from mounting economic and social problems through an organised campaign of painting and crossing out the number +384. “When results and public support run out, divisions are manufactured, tensions are raised and the public is flooded with artificially created issues,” said the party, led by Bojan Kostreš since 2022 and founded and led for decades by Nenad Čanak.
The +384 dialing code has not been assigned to any country. Nevertheless, unfounded rumours and disinformation have periodically circulated claiming that it has been “reserved” for Vojvodina, although there is no basis for this in the International Telecommunication Union’s official plans. The speculation draws on the fact that the number falls within the former Yugoslavia’s numbering zone, +38, where neighbouring codes have been assigned to Serbia (+381), Montenegro (+382), Kosovo (+383), Croatia (+385), Slovenia (+386), Bosnia and Herzegovina (+387) and North Macedonia (+389).
In 2016, posters appeared in Novi Sad announcing that the +384 code would be allocated to Vojvodina. They read, “… coming soon … +384 Telekom Vojvodine”, with Vojvodina’s traditional coat of arms alongside the text. The posters were produced by Young Vojvodina, an organisation that described itself as a “revolutionary republican movement fed up with feeble and lukewarm Vojvodina autonomist politicians”, alluding to the leaders of the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina and the Vojvodina Party. It is unclear who belongs to this unregistered organisation, where it operates from or whether it carries any political weight in Vojvodina. Its activities appear to be limited to occasional public statements, social networks or graffiti, but whether the organisation actually exists or has any real presence on the ground is anybody’s guess.
The government’s spin
To spin the issue, the government seized on a recent announcement by the Platform for a European Serbia that it would begin touring towns and cities across Vojvodina to speak with residents. The Platform for a European Serbia comprises Dragan Đilas’s Freedom and Justice Party, Zdravko Ponoš’s Serbia Centre, Pavle Grbović’s Free Citizens Movement and Goran Ješić’s Solidarity Civic Movement. Although it is not yet a formal electoral coalition, the four organisations are expected to run together in the next elections. The potential alliance is publicly referred to as the “pro-European ticket”.
On 19 July Marinika Tepić, a vice-president of Đilas’s party, announced that the Platform for a European Serbia would begin visiting towns and municipalities in Vojvodina to present citizens with its plan “for a normal life”. Its key points include accelerating Serbia’s EU accession, a genuine fight against corruption, justice, prioritising education and healthcare, and making agriculture a pillar of development. The announcement was not well thought through, as it was only logical to expect that the government would exploit any separate focus on Vojvodina to revive a familiar campaign.
The response was swift. On the same day, Ana Brnabić, a member of the Serbian Progressive Party presidency, accused the Platform for a European Serbia of making the reservation of the +384 dialing code for Vojvodina the lead item on its agenda. “Just for the sake of accuracy – they are setting off across Vojvodina to promote this plan and seek broad support,” Brnabić claimed. She was insinuating that the Platform supported Vojvodina’s independence, once again activating the theme of Vojvodina separatism.
The Freedom and Justice Party dismissed Brnabić’s claims as “stupid and dangerous”. Đilas’s deputy, Borko Stefanović, said the government “traditionally uses lies to create conflicts and divisions” in Serbia. “For them, every message and every statement serves only a politics of hatred, blood and soil. After all, no one knows more about granting dialing codes than Ana Brnabić and her cronies from the criminal regime, just as they gave Kosovo the international dialing code +383,” Stefanović said.
Periodic campaigns
Whenever it suits its political interests, the government periodically revives the issue of separatism in Vojvodina in order to discredit its opponents and distract attention from other events. This was also the case in February last year, when a Declaration on Vojvodina in Serbia was adopted by acclamation at a Serbian Progressive Party rally in Sremska Mitrovica on Serbia’s Statehood Day, warning of alleged separatist ambitions. The declaration was soon forgotten because its sole purpose was to falsely portray the student and civic uprising, which was then at its height, as “anti-Serbian”, and the organisers of student blockades as “Vojvodina separatists”. Much like last week’s graffiti campaign, the Progressive Party’s activists in February last year hung banners reading “Vojvodina Republic” around Novi Sad and attributed the messages to the opposition and protesting students.
Recycling the “Vojvodina question” and the alleged danger of the province’s secession, which is not a realistic prospect, serves another purpose – using fear as political fuel to mobilise support and votes. By invoking “internal enemies” in the absence of external ones, the Vučić government deliberately foments division and mistrust among citizens in an effort to retain its existing electorate, possibly attract new voters and once again present the Serbian president as the guardian of the country’s territorial integrity.
Although some citizens would like to live in an independent Vojvodina, their numbers are far from constituting a majority of the province’s population. Moreover, there have been no public calls for Vojvodina’s independence in recent decades, only demands for the restoration of its autonomy and a return to the status it enjoyed between 1974 and 1989. The League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina and the Vojvodina Party have always been known for advocating such positions, but their influence has declined considerably over the past few years. Voter disillusionment with these “autonomist parties” has probably also contributed to the substantial decline in the number of citizens declaring themselves Vojvodinians, from 28,567 in the 2011 census to just 9,985 in the 2022 census.
Autonomy without autonomy
Since 1974, when the last Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was enacted, the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo and Metohija had enjoyed a high level of autonomy in the then state. From 1974 to 1989, the two autonomous provinces were formally parts of Serbia, but de facto had the powers of republics, including the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. That radically changed shortly after Slobodan Milošević’s rise to power in Serbia in 1987. The mass street demonstrations of Milošević’s supporters (the only real “colour revolution” that occurred in the history of Serbia) on 5 October 1988 toppled the “autonomist” leadership of Vojvodina and replaced it with cadres from the inner circle of the new Serbian leader. That de facto abolished Vojvodina’s autonomy, while its powers were also formally and conspicuously diminished with the adoption of amendments to the Constitution of Serbia in March 1989. The adoption of those amendments, which were verified by a new Constitution in 1990, also annulled the autonomy of Kosovo and Metohija.
These moves are the main argument of those who claim that it was Milošević who broke Yugoslavia apart, because by annulling the provinces’ autonomy he took control of the SFRY Presidency. The organ, which acted as the collective head of state, had eight members at the time, one from each republic and province, meaning that, after Milošević’s moves, four were his people – representatives of Serbia, Vojvodina, Kosovo and Metohija, and Montenegro (which Milošević seized control over in January 1989 in the same way as he had in Vojvodina – through mass protests). In that way, “through the back door,” Milošević got the right to veto any decision made by the SFRY Presidency, which was the most important organ in the state.
The 2006 Constitution of Serbia, in the period when the government comprised parties of a democratic orientation, did not give Vojvodina back its former powers (although it formally kept the status of autonomous province), nor was that possibility even mentioned. The only relevant political party that persistently called for the reinstatement of Vojvodina’s legislative, executive and judicial powers was the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, which has in the meantime lost the importance it had in the 1990s and 2000s.
The original article by EUalive’s partner BETA can be found here.
Caption: On 23 July, the same piece of graffiti appeared at numerous locations across Novi Sad – the number +384 crossed out [@Radio021 on X]
Updated: July 30, 2026 - 05:50
