Tens of thousands of backers of Serbia’s student-led opposition movement gathered in central Belgrade for their last rally before a parliamentary election. They hope the vote will unseat the party of long-serving leader Aleksandar Vucic.
The crowds filled the capital on Thursday, while Vucic addressed a rival rally at a sports hall elsewhere in the city. Protesters waved flags reading “students are winning”, blew whistles and converged on Slavija Square, a location tied to some of the movement’s largest demonstrations.
Students seek to end Vucic’s 14-year grip on power
Sunday’s ballot is widely seen as an opportunity to bring an end to Vucic’s lengthy period in charge. One supporter, Marija Nedeljkovic Radic, 47, said she now believed change was possible. “Really, for the first time in my life, I believe that it is possible,” she said, adding that young people had given her hope of “a normal country”.
Also read: Serbia student movement challenges Vučić ahead of Sunday vote
The Student List, a movement without a leader made up of student-backed candidates, is challenging the right-wing populist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). That party has governed for more than 14 years. The list is fielding 250 candidates for the 250 seats in parliament, many of them academics or political newcomers, and campaigning mainly on fighting corruption.
University professor Jugoslav Gasic, one of the list’s candidates, addressed the Belgrade crowd, which responded with chants of “Victory, victory!”. “We are putting an end to 14 years of humiliation, chaos and betrayal, and to decades of putting personal and party interests above yours,” he said. “You deserve better, and we know how to deliver it. Students are winning!”
Vucic, meanwhile, urged his supporters to act. “Let us go out and defeat them! Defeat them decisively!” he told them on Thursday.
Railway collapse sparked nearly two years of protests
The demonstrations stem from the collapse in 2024 of a canopy at a newly renovated railway station in Novi Sad, which killed 16 people. The disaster is widely blamed on corruption. It set off some of the largest protests Serbia has seen since Slobodan Milosevic fell in 2000, and calls for transparency soon turned into demands for an early election.
Students spent several days marching across the country over the past week, including in rural areas that are considered Vucic’s strongholds. Vucic resigned the presidency in September in order to run for prime minister, and he called the snap election last month. He has described the movement as a foreign-funded attempt at a coup.
Doubts over polls, monitoring and election-day arrests
Serbia has no reliable independent polling. Still, political scientist Dusan Vucicevic told a news agency that he expected the students to take more than 40 percent of the vote, which would far exceed any opposition list’s result since the SNS came to power in 2012. An international news agency reported that polls pointed to a close contest between the two sides, raising fears of incidents if both claim victory.
This week, 24 Serbian civil society groups warned that conditions for “free and fair elections” were not in place. A monitoring group cited more than 100 violent incidents during the campaign.
On Wednesday, prosecutors questioned six people who had been arrested on suspicion of plotting “violence, riots and attacks” on election day.
