Serbia’s Vucic concedes defeat to student led movement
Kirsten Donovan |
Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic has conceded defeat to a diverse student-led protest movement in parliamentary elections.
“We still do not have final results, on the basis of a sample … it is clear that we have lost these elections, the Student List has won, they will have between 135 and 140 seats and we will have 105, no one else has entered parliament,” Vucic said on Sunday.
The snap elections, called by Vucic in September, came after almost two years of student-led demonstrations against perceived corruption and creeping authoritarianism triggered by the deaths of 16 people when a train station canopy collapsed in the city of Novi Sad in 2024.
The students have since gained widespread support to become the greatest threat to Vucic since he first became prime minister in 2014 and then president in 2017.
It is a seismic political shift in the Balkan country where Vucic, who had been endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and who denounced the student movement as a foreign-led attempt to unseat him, led for 14 years.
Tensions built as voting progressed during Sunday.
Police in anti-riot gear cordoned off an area in central Belgrade around the election commission headquarters.
Local media reported several violent incidents throughout the country, and special police vehicles could be seen near a Belgrade park where Vucic’s loyalists have been camping for over a year.
During a news conference less than two hours before polls closed, a student representative urged citizens to “stay calm and composed”.
While the increasingly authoritarian Vucic has routinely outplayed Serbia’s fractured opposition in the past, the leaderless youth movement has proved to be a tough opponent that rattled his firm grip on power in Serbia like no one else in the 14 years since his party took office.
The student victory echoes the recent electoral defeat of a Vucic ally in Hungary, where youth participation helped oust the autocratic Viktor Orbán after 16 years and bring in a new pro-European government.
It will also likely resonate beyond Serbia as countries across Europe face youth and student protests.
with AP
Reuters