Serbia’s governing order, unbroken since 2012, has been overturned at the ballot box, with the country’s long-serving leader conceding defeat to an anti-corruption movement born of institutional failure. Aleksandar Vučić, the right-wing populist who had ruled for over a decade and served two terms as president, admitted late on Sunday that his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) had lost snap parliamentary elections to the Student List, a movement formed less than two years ago in response to a railway station disaster widely blamed on corruption and negligence.
“It is clear we have lost these elections,” Vučić told supporters at SNS headquarters in Belgrade, citing preliminary figures that gave the students 2.2 million votes against 1.72 million for his party. A later projection by the independent pollster CeSID put the Student List on course for 52.9% of the vote, on a turnout of 69.34%, the highest for years.
The electoral verdict carries direct accountability implications. Vučić had called the snap elections after two years of protests triggered by the collapse of a canopy in front of Novi Sad station, which killed 16 people. Unable to seek a third presidential term, he had led his party’s campaign with the aim of returning to the post of prime minister, which he left in 2017. His defeat now forecloses that route back to executive power.
The Student List, which has no obvious leaders and whose members are not experienced in politics, chose to contest the 250-member parliament with candidates drawn from across Serbian society, including doctors, actors, academics and sports personalities. Its manifesto was framed squarely around governance and oversight. It promised to purge officials who broke rules during the crackdown on protesters, to stop party loyalists from heading public enterprises, and to free the public broadcaster from political control. Vučić and the SNS have repeatedly denied corruption.
Lead candidate Ilija Srdanović told BBC Serbian: “This will be a free state.” He said the movement, which attracted anti-government voters across Serbia, hoped to “free the country from tyranny”. During a celebration speech, candidate Radomir Saicic said Serbians had shown “no obstacle was greater than their will”, adding, according to Reuters: “No force can forever overpower a people who have decided to take their destiny into their own hands.”
Celebrations followed the concession in Belgrade, in Novi Sad, whose station disaster set the protests in motion, and in other cities, with crowds dancing and chanting “victory”, cars honking and fireworks set off. “Serbia is free,” one student told the BBC. “It’s a miracle.” Another celebrant, Selena Lebovic, told Reuters the result was “really fabulous”, adding: “We are all crying, and what to say. We couldn’t believe that it would be so easy.” In Novi Sad, David Vasić told BBC Serbian: “Everything is going to get better now.”
The vote was held amid high tensions, with police sealing off streets around the Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) in Belgrade. Long queues formed outside polling stations in cities and towns across the country, and outside booths in countries with sizeable Serbian communities, including Ljubljana, Munich, Los Angeles, Chicago and, in heavy rain, Paris.
The international dimension was immediate. European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said “a new chapter can begin for Serbia. The door to the EU is open, and we are ready to move forward together.” Vučić had backed Serbia’s EU candidacy while refusing to impose sanctions on Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and had campaigned on pledges to increase pensions and public sector salaries and investment in state healthcare. His defeat was also welcomed by Hungary’s prime minister, Péter Magyar, who said he was delighted to hear from the Student List’s leaders “how much strength our victory in April had given them”. Magyar’s party had ended 16 years of Viktor Orbán rule, while Vučić’s SNS had held power since 2012.
Attention now turns to the mechanics of the transition: who will lead the Student List as prime minister, and December’s presidential elections, with parliament speaker Ana Brnabić currently filling the head of state role in a caretaker capacity.