Serbia | Change of power in Serbia: “We want to repair the system”

The big cleanup has begun. The mood among the supporters of the student list is good after the election victory. But the road to a different Serbia is still long. Photo: AFP/Milos Milanovic »We could never have imagined that it would come to this. Personally, I never thought beyond October 25th - everything that followed was basically unimaginable. I didn’t even want to think about it,” says Nenad Jevtić. »Election day was an indescribable experience.«

The 23-year-old English student from Belgrade has been part of the student movement in Serbia since the protests began. There he coordinated protest events and working groups. Now his work is changing: The Student List (SL) won the parliamentary elections on Sunday and, according to the State Election Commission (RIK), achieved an absolute majority of 53 percent - while President Aleksandar Vučić's Progressive Party (SNS), which has been in power since 2012, slipped to around 39 percent.

In November 2024, large-scale demonstrations began after a train station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad, and the country's universities were occupied. This movement was largely supported by students who ran in the parliamentary elections with a grassroots democratic student list. Their main demands: "We want to eliminate corruption and remove people from their positions of power who abuse this power or exploit the media for their own purposes," says Nenad.

"We want to eliminate corruption and remove people from their positions of power who abuse this power or exploit the media for their own purposes."

Voter turnout was around 69 percent - the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia, as the Reuters news agency reported. Behind this was a mobilization that reached far beyond the universities. Nenad helped in an improvised coordination center in his Belgrade community of Čukarica on election day. Together with 30 other helpers, he took care of the logistics and food for the volunteers, while his fellow campaigners maintained contact with the election observers at the polling stations.

Nenad reports irregularities: »The UV lamps used to identify voters were supplied with defective devices or the batteries failed. They tried everything to delay the opening of the polling stations as much as possible. In the end, the student list won 110 of the 113 polling stations in his district, said the student. »There had never been anything like this before. None of the previous opposition parties were ever so well organized.

"We could never have imagined that it would come to this," says Nenad Jevtić about the student list's election victory in Serbia. Photo: private This success was no coincidence, as Marina Vulović, political scientist at the University of Potsdam, says: »The success of the student movement can be explained above all by its broad mobilization strategy, which follows a catch-all movement philosophy. The central question asked by the students during the election campaign was: 'Serbia or Mafia?' This formulated a clear alternative to the incumbent government, which was intended to unite different social groups behind a common goal."

But can unity emerge from the heterogeneous movement? The leading candidate, Ilija Srdanović, is a cardiologist with no political experience. The 250-strong list includes doctors and university professors as well as artists, entrepreneurs and athletes. According to the movement, the candidates were selected on a grassroots basis. »How sustainable the alliance will be in the long term remains to be seen. But I would emphasize that the movement's members are less far apart on key political positions than it seems at first glance. A clear majority share the common goal of restoring democracy and the rule of law in Serbia. That is also the most important goal,” says Vulović.

Nenad also sees the differences pragmatically: »I don't think ideological questions will be a big problem in the foreseeable future. Rather, I believe that it is precisely through this process that we will grow even stronger together and remain united until the end." For him, something else is more important: "We don't focus on all the problems and events that took place before we were even born. Instead, we focus on current issues and on repairing the system - not by replacing it completely, but by confronting it. Repairing instead of replacing - can that work?

Vulović sees possible problems on the way to democratic reforms. The student list is “faced with the enormous challenge of overcoming a structural legacy of corruption and state capture, which affects almost all areas of the state apparatus. The most important tasks include filling key positions in the state security organs (including the police), the ministries, the judiciary and the public prosecutor's office and reforming politically compromised structures," says Vulović.

But she is optimistic. Due to the absolute majority in parliament, the student list is not dependent on any coalition partners, said Vulović. "This gives it greater scope for action to implement structural changes and push forward necessary reforms, even in the face of political resistance, than previous, democratically oriented governments."

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