Student Movement Challenges Vucic's 12 Years in Power as Serbia Votes on Sunday
After two years of student protests, Serbia will vote on Sunday in a snap parliamentary election billed as a referendum on the country's future. Rallies were held across the country on Thursday, the final day of campaigning, and observers say the vote could threaten populist leader Aleksandar Vucic's 12 years in power.
The main threat to Vucic's dominance comes from the two-year-old student movement. It has no obvious leaders and its participants are not used to conventional politics, but the 'Student List-Students Win' platform has attracted anti-government voters across Serbia.
The Student List is fielding candidates from across Serbian society. Joining students marching towards Belgrade, its lead candidate and cardiologist Ilija Srdanovic said history was being rewritten and described the energy as unstoppable.
It all began on 1 November 2024, when the concrete canopy collapsed outside Novi Sad train station in Serbia's second biggest city, killing 16 people. The tragedy was seen as emblematic of corruption and negligence, and critics linked the station's fatally flawed renovation to a president who had closely associated himself with the project.
What started as weekly student protests demanding justice on university campuses and city streets soon became a national movement. Farmers, actors and judges were among the many sections of society that joined, and much of the organising happened at local level.
Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) was shaken and within weeks the prime minister resigned. Belgrade saw one of its biggest ever protests in March 2025, and while the leaderless student movement grew in strength, it organised itself through student assemblies, or plenums.
At the last election in 2023, the SNS was challenged by a loose coalition of pro-EU parties that later fell apart. This time Vucic faces a far clearer threat from a student movement that has shunned the mainstream opposition parties.
Vucic has been prime minister or president since 2014, and was deputy prime minister for two years before that. He has served two terms as president and cannot seek a third, so he is now leading his party with the aim of returning as prime minister, a post he left in 2017.
The right-wing populist leader has doubled down on unfounded allegations that his opponents are not so much students and professors as 'mighty great powers' seeking to overthrow Serbia. He has also vowed to end what he sees as the politicisation of schools and universities.
Vucic has steered a careful path with the West, continuing to back Serbia's candidacy for the European Union while refusing to impose sanctions on Russia for its full-scale war in Ukraine. Several government ministers attended the Belgrade funeral of war criminal Ratko Mladic, prompting EU anger at his 'glorification'.
Helena Ivanov of the Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank, says the students have been able to mobilise the masses in a way traditional opposition parties have not, and that this is Vucic's biggest challenge since he came to power. She noted that he has run in every election since the introduction of the multi-party system, so defeating him will not be easy, but that this time he will not have an easy time either.
Serbia's parliament has 250 seats and there is just one national constituency under proportional representation. Voting runs from 07:00 to 20:00 on Sunday. There are 6.45 million registered voters, and anyone over the age of 18 can choose which party's list of candidates to vote for.
Sunday's vote involves 18 lists, but only seven of them are fielding the full 250 candidates. MPs are elected according to how much support a list receives if it wins more than 3 percent of the vote. Several opposition parties have pulled out in favour of the Student List.
Far from being students themselves, the candidates are made up of teachers and university professors, actors and doctors, farmers and scientists. Top candidate Ilija Srdanovic is a cardiology professor in Novi Sad, while others include former basketball star Dejan Bodiroga, renowned actor Tihomir Stanic and former National Bank of Serbia governor Dejan Soskic.
Under an 11-point programme, the student movement wants to eradicate corruption by forming a police unit to arrest those responsible, purge officials in the internal affairs ministry who broke rules on cracking down on protesters or are linked to organised crime, reform Serbia's skewed media scene and free the public broadcaster of political control, and stop recruiting party loyalists to head public enterprises. Vucic and the SNS deny corruption and seeking to influence the media.
European observers are monitoring Sunday's vote, but even beforehand the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has spoken of a 'tense and divisive electoral climate' and a 'referendum-like atmosphere'. Serbia's election commission says elections are free and the ballot is secret. However, independent watchdog CRTA has warned of threats and physical violence, surveillance of opposition activists, and institutions from ministries to local governments becoming involved in 'electoral engineering'. The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom says some 160 attacks on media and journalists have been recorded in Serbia this year. Sunday's result will show whether two years of protest can also end Vucic's long rule at the ballot box.
