Serbia Votes as Student-Backed Anti-Corruption List Challenges Vucic’s Ruling Party

Polls opened in Serbia on Sunday for a snap parliamentary election that is set to become the country’s most fiercely contested vote in more than 14 years.

A student-led movement is seeking to oust the party of veteran leader Aleksandar Vucic. The movement’s Students’ List is now the biggest challenge to Vucic’s right-wing populist Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS.

Students’ List challenges SNS

The Students’ List is a selection of candidates backed by the largely leaderless movement. Most of its 250 candidates are experts from fields including academia and the arts, and have little political experience.

The SNS has dominated Serbian politics throughout its tenure, making the student-backed list a significant challenger in the snap vote. The election therefore brings the ruling party into direct competition with a movement that emerged from prolonged protests rather than an established political structure.

Vote follows railway station tragedy

The snap election is the culmination of nearly two years of student-led protests. Those protests were sparked by the 2024 collapse of a canopy at Novi Sad railway station, which killed 16 people.

The tragedy was widely blamed on corruption. It triggered some of Serbia’s largest protests since the fall of strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. The protests have now led to a parliamentary contest centred on a student-backed anti-corruption challenge to the party that has dominated Serbian politics.

Source: South China Morning Post