Aleksandar Vučić, who has dominated Serbian politics for years, conceded defeat late Sunday to the student-led protest movement in the country's snap parliamentary elections, the BBC reported. While noting that final results were not yet in, the right-wing populist said "it is clear that we have lost these elections."
Preliminary figures from Serbia's election commission pointed to record turnout, which commentators had expected to help the students. By 6 p.m. local time, two hours before polls closed, 64.9% of voters had cast ballots.
From a collapsed canopy to the ballot box
Vučić called the vote after two years of demonstrations set off by the 2024 collapse of a train station canopy in Novi Sad that killed 16 people. For many Serbians, the disaster came to symbolize corruption and negligence in the state.
Having served two terms as president and barred from a third, Vučić led his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) into the race aiming to return to the prime minister's office, which he left in 2017. He campaigned on promises to raise pensions and public sector pay and to invest in state healthcare. He and the SNS have repeatedly denied corruption.
The Student List, a movement with no obvious leaders and members largely new to politics, drew anti-government voters from across the country. It fielded candidates for the 250-seat parliament from many walks of life, including doctors, actors, academics and athletes, and ran on a platform of removing officials who broke rules to crack down on protesters, ending the practice of party loyalists running public enterprises and freeing the public broadcaster from political control.
Celebrations in Belgrade and Novi Sad
Vučić spoke at SNS headquarters in Belgrade, where the streets soon filled with people dancing, chanting for victory and setting off fireworks as car horns blared. The center of Novi Sad, where the protests began, was packed. The Student List's lead candidate, Ilija Srdanović, told BBC Serbian the movement hoped to free the country from tyranny.
The day had been tense. Police sealed off streets around the Republic Electoral Commission in Belgrade, and long lines formed at polling stations across Serbia and at diaspora voting sites from Ljubljana and Munich to Paris, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The result marks a striking reversal for a leader who has backed Serbia's bid to join the European Union while refusing to sanction Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Final results are still to come, and with them the first test of whether a movement born in the streets can govern.
Reporting sources: BBC News, “Serbia's veteran ruler Vučić concedes election to student-led protest movement”.