Serbia’s student movement topples strongman Vucic after 2 years of anti-corruption protests

ALEKSANDER Vucic, former Serbian president and a longtime leader who has dominated the country's politics, conceded defeat on Sunday (25 October) following a snap vote, saying that the student-backed movement “Student List,” which challenged him, had won the election.

Addressing his supporters in Belgrade while the results of the snap election were still coming in, Vucic announced that Student List had won and added that it had received “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. Student List won over two million votes in the Balkan country of 6.5 million people.

Vucic, the former president who has ruled Serbia for more than a decade, resigned in September in hopes of returning as the Balkan country's prime minister. However, his plan backfired after Student List gathered nationwide support and brought roughly 69% of voters to the elections, a record turnout, Bloomberg reported.

What triggered Aleksandar Vucic's defeat?

Vucic has dominated the country's politics for a long time. During this time, he has skillfully balanced the competing interests of maintaining close ties with Russia, China, and US President Donald Trump's administration while also pursuing a bid to join the European Union. However, his defeat was triggered by a grassroots protest movement following outrage over a deadly construction disaster that eventually led him to resign.

In November 2024, a concrete roof over the entrance of a railway station in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad collapsed, killing at least 16 people. Vucic, who served as president then, confirmed in a national address that the initial death toll was 14, including a six-year-old girl and a citizen of North Macedonia, AP reported.

The train station was reportedly renovated twice in recent years. Critics of Vucic's government attributed the tragedy to corruption and sloppy renovations, and members of opposition parties planned to protest on 2 November, a day after the incident.

The protests were spearheaded by university students, who blamed corruption and incompetence among Vucic's officials for the deaths.

According to AFP, for nearly two years, students continued to stage rallies and march across the nation to reach voters directly and counter the media machine of the former president's Serbian Progressive Party. Their protests have drawn massive crowds, with a final pre-election rally on 22 October in Belgrade attracting over 150,000 people.

The sustained protests eventually pushed Vucic to call an early parliamentary election in September and resign as president to seek the premiership. But the student-backed movement turned public anger into electoral support, defeating his bid to return as prime minister.