Serbian Ruling Party Falls Behind Student List in Parliamentary Vote
Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat on Sunday after a sample of votes projected his party would win 105 seats against the Student List's 135 to 140.
By Kavya Sharma ·
Serbia's ruling party lost its parliamentary majority on Sunday to a student-led movement that organized protests against Aleksandar Vucic for nearly two years.
Vucic, who has led Serbian politics for more than a decade, conceded after vote samples showed his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) was projected to take 105 seats in the 250-member parliament. The Student List was projected at 135 to 140 seats. "It is clear that we have lost these elections," Vucic told supporters. Turnout reached its highest level in over 30 years.
The student movement began after a train station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad on November 1, 2024, killing 16 people. The protests that followed expanded into a political platform that promised to address corruption, depoliticise public institutions, and restore citizens' rights. Ilija Srdanovic, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Novi Sad, led the movement during the campaign. Vucic called the demonstrators, who included professors, doctors, and workers, "blockaders" and accused them of trying to destabilise the country.
Vucic, born in Belgrade in 1990, entered politics in 1993 with the Serbian Radical Party. He co-founded the SNS in 2008 after a split in that party. He became prime minister in 2014, president in 2017, and won re-election in 2022. His presidential term was set to run until 2027. He stepped down in September under pressure from the protests and called the early vote.
Since Vucic took power in 2012, unemployment fell from 26 percent to 8 to 9 percent, and nominal GDP nearly tripled to about 90 billion euros ($101bn), according to official data cited by Reuters. Annual foreign direct investment rose from about 800 million euros ($896m) in 2012 to 5.2 billion euros ($5.8bn) in 2024. Rising costs and public debt remain in dispute.
Political scientist Dusko Radosavljevic said the past decade saw "systematic pressure and the destruction of social institutions". He said state intelligence services spent more time monitoring political opponents than their actual duties, and that critical thinking was pushed out of public media.
Source: Al Jazeera
