Tens of thousands of supporters of Serbia’s student-led opposition movement have gathered in central Belgrade for their final rally ahead of a parliamentary election in which they hope to oust veteran leader Aleksandar Vucic’s party. The crowds filled the capital on Thursday, as Vucic held a rival rally at a sports hall across town. Waving “students are winning” flags and blowing whistles, the marchers converged on Slavija Square, the site of some of the movement’s biggest protests.
Sunday’s vote is seen as a chance to end Vucic’s longtime rule. The vote follows nearly two years of student-led protests triggered by the 2024 collapse of a canopy at a newly renovated railway station in Novi Sad that killed 16 people. The Student List, a leaderless movement of student-backed candidates, is seeking to unseat Vucic’s right-wing populist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has been in power for more than 14 years.
It is running 250 candidates for the 250-seat parliament, many of them academics or political outsiders, on a platform centred on fighting corruption. Students are winning!” The railway disaster, widely blamed on corruption, triggered some of Serbia’s largest demonstrations since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and demands for transparency grew into calls for an early election. Over the week, students marched for days across the country, including rural areas that are Vucic’s strongholds.
Vucic, who resigned the presidency in September to run for prime minister, called the snap election last month. He has accused the movement of being a foreign-funded coup attempt. Defeat them decisively!” he told supporters on Thursday.
Serbia lacks reliable independent polling. But political scientist Dusan Vucicevic told the news agency he expected the students to win more than 40 percent of the vote, far more than any opposition list since the SNS took power in 2012. The news agency reported that polls suggested a close race between the two sides, raising fears of incidents if both claim victory.
Twenty-four Serbian civil society groups warned this week that conditions for “free and fair elections” were lacking, and a monitoring group cited more than 100 violent incidents during the campaign. On Wednesday, prosecutors questioned six people arrested on suspicion of plotting “violence, riots and attacks” on election day.
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