Serbia election: student-led movement challenges Vučić's SNS

A student-led movement in Serbia is contesting Sunday's election as the most serious challenger in years to the governing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and its leader, Aleksandar Vučić.

The group, "Student List–Students Win" (Studentska lista–Studenti pobeđuju), grew out of two years of demonstrations that drew in citizens, teachers, professors and other experts, becoming the largest protest movement Serbia has seen in years.

Its catalyst was the collapse of a concrete canopy at the renovated Novi Sad railway station on November 1, 2024. Sixteen people were killed. The tragedy triggered public outrage over alleged corruption and questions about construction safety, the quality of the renovation work and government oversight.

Kosta Golubovic, a law student at the University of Novi Sad who has been involved since the first day, told Al Jazeera that change is clearly necessary and that the state must belong to its people rather than to "the mafia and criminals". He cited the treatment of the judiciary, conditions at the local level, mayors resorting to violence, dubious privatisations, money laundering and what he described as the erosion of institutions.

A movement without a leader

The students have not called for Vučić's overthrow, but their persistence has created one of the biggest threats to his long grip on power. Vučić became prime minister in 2014 and was elected president in 2017, a traditionally ceremonial role he has bolstered by maintaining influence over the SNS.

Opposition parties and rights watchdogs accuse Vučić and his party of bribing voters, stifling media freedom, violence against opponents and ties with organised crime. Vučić and his allies deny the allegations, but Serbia's rating on Transparency International's global corruption index has worsened gradually in recent years.

Golubovic said Vučić is clearly afraid of the students, arguing that for the first time in 16 years the SNS is no longer the most popular political option in the country.

The movement's organisation is central to its approach. The old student parliament at the University of Belgrade has been replaced by plenums: daily assemblies where each group votes on its course of action. Working groups handle strategy, donations and security, and universities in different cities coordinate so that demands stay broadly aligned.

Three rules define the method, according to the students: no single leader, making the protests harder for authorities to disrupt; peaceful demonstrations with any debris cleaned up afterwards; and decisions taken democratically in hour-long plenary sessions.

Natasa Kandic, a Serbian peace activist, sociologist and founder of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, said the students had led protests entirely without violence for the first time in Serbia, describing the daily video clips as a new culture shaped by irony and laughter.

The "Student Plan"

State-affiliated media have maligned the students. Some authorities claimed the group has no programme, and Vučić labelled them "terrorists". Their leaders say they do have a plan: an officially titled "Student Plan" divided into three sections with 11 points.

Ilija Srdanovic, a cardiologist who is the lead candidate and ballot holder for the Student List, said the platform deliberately avoids fixed deadlines, arguing that timelines can only be set once contributors understand the full current state of affairs. Debates have frequently touched on a special prosecutorial police unit, a law on the origin of assets, transitional justice and the renovation of rural medical clinics.

Kandic is sceptical that the movement could implement such changes. The student movement, Kandic said, does not possess the transformative potential to drive social change, break with the past and alter a political climate in which convicted war criminals are celebrated, Kosovo is treated as part of Serbia and politicians from neighbouring countries are branded enemies.

Source: Al Jazeera.