BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbians vote Sunday in a snap parliamentary election that analysts say is the most competitive since Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) came to power in 2012, BBC News and DW reported.
The main challenger is the Student List, a slate of 250 candidates chosen by student assemblies at university faculties after nearly two years of anti-corruption protests sparked by the November 2024 collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad that killed 16 people. The list is headed by Novi Sad University cardiologist Ilija Srdanović, though the movement has no formal leader.
A reported 150,000 supporters packed Belgrade’s Slavija Square for the Student List’s final rally on Thursday, the BBC said. “These are the first elections since Vucic came to power in 2012 that are competitive and whose outcome is uncertain,” political scientist Dušan Spasojević told DW, adding that polls suggest the students could win more than 40% of the vote.
Vučić stepped down as president when he called the election last month in order to run for prime minister. At his own closing rally he cast the students as foreign-backed. “They tried to destroy our country on foreign orders, and that is why this is the hardest battle,” he said, as quoted by DW.
The independent monitor CRTA recorded 116 incidents of physical violence or verbal threats by the final week of the campaign. Observers of the 2023 election cited an “overwhelming ruling party advantage” due to media bias and misuse of public resources, the BBC noted.
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