Serbian longtime leader Aleksandar Vucic surprisingly conceded defeat in a snap vote, handing victory to a student-led movement that built mass support by pledging to fight graft and reverse democratic backsliding.
The Student List won more than 2 million votes in the Balkan country of 6.5 million, Vucic told his supporters in Belgrade, just 90 minutes after the polls closed on Sunday. The result would give the movement a simple majority in the 250-seat parliament.
The outcome marks an astonishing fall from grace for Serbia’s strongman, who dominated the country’s politics for over a decade, Bloomberg reported.
During that time, Mr Vucic skillfully balanced competing interests of staying friendly with Russia, China and the US administration of Donald Trump, while pursuing a bid to join the European Union.
But it was a grassroots protest movement sparked by an outrage over a deadly construction disaster that eventually became his undoing.
By resigning as president and calling the election, Mr Vucic hoped to return as prime minister. His plan, which borrowed a page from Vladimir Putin’s playbook, backfired amid the highest election turnout in 33 years of 69%.
The nation is now headed for an unprecedented redrawing of its political spectrum, an extensive review of deals and policies as well as potential probes into the ruling elite.
The Student List reacted with chants of “Vucic is gone” in their first public reaction to the outcome, but what comes next is less clear. The movement doesn’t have a single leader or people with extensive experience in government.
“This is the victory of the conviction that Serbia can and will do better,” said Radomir Saicic, one of the movement’s leaders. “We call on all citizens to act peacefully and in dignified manner. We didn’t fight for months to lose it today.”
Political overhaul
Mr Vucic, 56, is the second longtime leader to lose power in eastern Europe this year, following the ouster of his ally Viktor Orban in Hungary six months ago.
The former president told his supporters the Student List won the ballot with the “direct support from some European countries and the American deep state, the one that is also against President Trump.” He called the movement “just contractors doing some very dirty work,” without providing evidence for his claims.
While he conceded defeat, Mr Vucic pledged to make a comeback one day, saying: “I’ll defeat them much sooner than they think.”
However, his exit amounts to a tectonic shift for Serbia. The parliament will now effectively have only two sizable political camps, removing an array of once mainstream groups from liberal to conservatives and nationalists. Also out for the first time in 18 years are the Socialists, once led by late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
Mr Vucic called the election more than a year ahead of schedule after unrelenting anti-government rallies, triggered by the collapse of a train station canopy that killed 16 people in 2024. University students spearheaded the protests, blaming corruption and incompetence among ruling officials for the deaths.
And while Mr Vucic is now gone, his geopolitical balancing act may continue. Ahead of the vote, the movement’s representatives were cautious on sensitive issues like the nation’s rejection of Kosovo’s unilateral secession, or on adopting sanctions against Russia.
The opposition, which gained traction for the first time in more than a decade, pledged to focus on fighting corruption, overhauling the judiciary, improving election conditions and boosting media diversity.
Meeting EU membership conditions isn’t an immediate priority either. The Student List representatives have said the country can decide on that in a referendum, if invited by the bloc.
No clear leader
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the change of power in a post on X on Sunday. The bloc was “ready to support reforms.”
The movement will certainly have its work cut out. Its representatives pledged to break up monopolies and review large infrastructure contracts signed under Mr Vucic.
Those include the $2.4 billion Expo 2027 that Vucic has touted as his legacy project. In Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, Serbia’s score was the lowest in two decades.
The Students List has operated through a patchwork of “plenums,” or cells, without a distinct leader and is yet to announce its candidate for prime minister.
On election night, the movement was late with a victory speech as its representatives couldn’t decide who will speak on their behalf.
“The Student List will have a very hard job organising the transfer of power, which Vucic will probably try to boycott,” said Zarko Puhovski, an independent political analyst from Croatia. “Their list is dominated by people with little political or government experience.”
-- Bloomberg
