Before parliamentary elections in Serbia: Tens of thousands of opposition supporters on the streets of Belgrade

afp | Three days before parliamentary elections in Serbia, tens of thousands of opposition supporters demonstrated for an end to President Aleksandar Vučić's government in the Western Balkan state. Supporters of the student list marched through the streets of Belgrade on Thursday evening, eventually gathering in the capital's Salvija Square. According to the independent group Archives of Public Meetings, around 150,000 people attended the rally.

The list is supported by students and aims to end the more than 14-year-old government of Vučić's right-wing populist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in Sunday's parliamentary elections. "I came to support the student list because the young people finally gave me hope that it is possible to live in a normal country," 47-year-old Marija Nedeljkovic Radic told AFP. “For the first time in my life, I really believe it’s possible.”

Vučić resigned from his office as president at the end of September after nine years and is now running for the post of head of government, which he already held in the three years before his time as president. With his resignation, he cleared the way for new elections on Sunday and thus met a main demand of the student protest movement that arose after the collapse of a train station canopy in the city of Novi Sad in November 2024.

The protests, which were mainly carried out by students, were initially primarily about coming to terms with the accident in which 16 people died. The themes of the demonstrations later expanded to include general criticism of the government and widespread corruption in the country.

Vučić sees the protest movement as a foreign-financed coup attempt. He spoke at an election rally in a Belgrade sports hall on Thursday evening. "Let us never forget how they tried to overthrow our state. Let us always protect and defend it," the 56-year-old shouted to his supporters. “Let’s go out and defeat them!”

According to civil society groups, the election campaign was marked by intimidation, arrests and misuse of public funds. There are no reliable predictions about the outcome of the election. Political scientist Dušan Vučićević from the University of Belgrade told AFP he expects the student list to win more than 40 percent of the vote - the best result by an opposition group since the SNS came to power in 2012.

Vučić was a former radical nationalist and a follower of former ruler Slobodan Milošević, who died in prison in 2006 as a defendant at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. However, Vučić later moderated his positions. For years he has presented himself as a reformer and has been committed to Serbia's accession to the EU. At the same time, despite Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, Vučić continues to rely on his country's good relations with Russia.

The main reason for the standstill in Serbia's accession negotiations is a lack of progress in meeting EU criteria on the rule of law, human rights and market economy. In its last enlargement report, the EU Commission also criticized regressions in freedom of expression and the continued high level of corruption in the country.