Serbia's student candidates face long road to governing after election win

BELGRADE: The Students' List won 140 of the 250 seats in Serbia's Parliament in the Oct. 25 vote, while Aleksandar Vucic's SNS party holds 104 seats, according to preliminary results from the state election commission. Vucic conceded defeat about 90 minutes after polls closed Sunday.

A new government could be sworn in by the end of the year. Serbia's election laws allow for appeals and possible reruns at individual polling stations before final results are certified and Parliament is inaugurated. No policy changes can take effect until that government takes office.

A separate presidential election must also be held. Vucic resigned as president last month to lead the SNS ticket in the parliamentary race, and the vacancy requires a vote to choose his successor as head of state.

Crowds celebrating the student victory Sunday stoned withdrawing police and dismantled a camp used by Vucic loyalists in a central Belgrade park that had stood there for more than a year. On Monday evening, groups entered the private Informer television station, which has run coverage labeling student protesters as enemies of the state. Police cordons guarded another pro-Vucic broadcaster, Pink TV, and Vucic condemned the "violence," warning his supporters could "self-organize."

Dijana Hrka, mother of one of the 16 victims killed in the 2024 train station canopy collapse in northern Serbia that set off the protests, was among those who entered the station and confronted editor-in-chief Dragan Vucicevic. On Tuesday, Serbian journalists' associations filed a formal request with the state media regulator to revoke the station's broadcasting license. The Students' List said it opposes such attacks and promised to "liberate the media in the assembly, through an institutional struggle for freedom and professional journalism."

The movement's 11-point program centers on fighting corruption, which grew out of the Novi Sad train station canopy collapse. Students have promised to overhaul the police force and judiciary, create a police unit accountable to independent prosecutors, bar corrupt officials from office, and review all major projects of the previous government.

The candidates have avoided discussing Serbia's EU membership bid and its relations with Russia during the protests. Vucic refused to join EU sanctions against Moscow over the war in Ukraine, which stalled Serbia's EU bid. Some Students' List officials have said the sanctions policy will not change.

EU enlargement commissioner Marta Kos wrote on X after speaking by phone with Ilija Srdanovic, a physician who is first on the Students' List ticket, that "we are ready to support the new Serbian government in progressing on its European path." Media expert Snezana Milivojevic told N1 television that the public's "big expectations will be hard to satisfy."