Serbia votes - can Vucic consolidate his power again?

Serbia votes Can Vucic consolidate his power again? As of: October 25, 2026 • 5:10 a.m

Serbia's long-time head of state Vucic wants to win the election today and become prime minister. But the strong student protest movement could depose him from power after 14 years. Who is Vucic?

Aleksandar Vucic was close to the people during the election campaign and allowed himself to be filmed by the Serbian mass media. They are more than 90 percent under his control.

A video clip from the tabloid Alo! shows Vucic smiling and clapping to the beat on the village square of Miroc. Children in traditional clothes dance in front of him. In other videos, Vucic pets puppies and horses or tries the food of villagers. Vucic eats burek, Vucic cuts a ham, Vucic stirs jam in a saucepan.

But it is noticeable that he acts almost alone with individual citizens. The scenery always seems to be well shielded. His election campaign shows are also shielded; he only appears in front of his own supporters, in squares and in large halls.

The harsh reaction of the Serbian government to the protests in the country seems to be giving the demonstrations further popularity. more

In his speeches he tries to discredit the student movement: "The students tell you that they make their decisions in plenary session. Such nonsense! We will soon reveal who they got all their money from for their social media campaigns. They are trying to destroy traditional Serbian society," Vucic calls out to his supporters.

The pro-government media joins in and spreads conspiracy theories about the student movement. It is a violent coup attempt, a pro-Western color revolution like in Ukraine, controlled by foreign secret services.

It's no coincidence that Vucic's communication is so manipulative and aggressive. It is interesting to take a look at his biography.

The student protests against Vucic began two years ago. In the election they are running as a collective. more

Vucic first appeared publicly in 1992, during the Bosnian War. At that time, Vucic was on duty with the Bosnian Serb positions shelling Sarajevo and with the Bosnian Serb warfare in Pale.

There he was hired as a reporter for Bosnian Serb war propaganda. In Serbia, Vucic joined the ultranationalists, the Serbian Radical Party. Vucic comes from a background of nationalists and war criminals, said Florian Bieber, head of the Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Graz.

"He comes from a scene that represented the Greater Serbian position, that formed paramilitary groups and that clearly supported the Bosnian Serb leadership during the wars of the 1990s," says Bieber: "That is his political environment."

EU leaders criticize Serbia after the funeral of convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic. more

Vucic's political foster father became the head of the Radical Party, Vojislav Seselj, an ultranationalist who recruited paramilitary fighters for the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

Seselj founded the "Serbian Chetnik Movement", based on the Chetniks, the monarchist Greater Serbia fighters of the First and Second World Wars. Seselj was later sentenced in The Hague to ten years in prison for inciting deportation, forcible expulsion and inhumane acts.

In 1998, the Serbian Radical Party formed a coalition with the SPS party of Slobodan Milosevic, the main warmonger of the Balkan wars. Vucic became information minister in Milosevic's government cabinet. That was during the Kosovo war.

The demonstrators accuse the government under President Vucic of corruption and abuse of power. more

At that time, Vucic was particularly noticeable because he took action against critical journalists in Serbia, said Southeast Europe expert Bieber. "There was a very repressive climate at the time, which was encouraged and encouraged by Vucic. All critical media that still existed were threatened if they reported negatively about the war. There were verbal attacks on opposition media that led to the murder of the independent journalist Slavko Curuvija."

Milosevic fell after mass protests in October 2000. Vucic went into opposition with the Radical Party. The formal party leader remained Vojislav Seselj, who was imprisoned in The Hague, deputy leader was Tomislav Nikolic, and Vucic was the general secretary. However, the ultranationalists never made it back to power.

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But in 2008, Nikolic and Vucic pulled off a coup. They broke away from Seselj and founded the so-called progress party SNS and presented themselves as pro-European. "Vucic realized: If you are anti-European, if you agitate against Europe and at the same time talk about Greater Serbia, you won't get a majority. This supposed purification of the nationalists caused great euphoria in the West," explains Bieber.

The new SNS party came to power in 2012, and Nikolic was Serbian president from 2012 to 2017. But then he was eliminated through political maneuvers by his colleague Vucic. Vucic seized complete power and built a massive party apparatus that permeates the entire society.

One in nine Serbs is now an SNS member. For comparison: only about one in a hundred Germans is a member of the governing parties CDU, CSU and SPD. Many Serbs joined the party to get a secure job in the public service.

Vucic controls the judiciary, the police and the civil service: he has also been repeatedly accused of having his own thugs to intimidate critics. Countless incidents have been documented.

In terms of foreign policy, Vucic is pursuing a lurching course between rapprochement with the EU without making any significant progress in the accession process and close partnerships with Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump and the People's Republic of China.

Six months before the end of his mandate, Vucic resigns as Serbian president. With this step he wants to become Prime Minister. more

According to Transparency International, Serbia is the third most corrupt country in Europe, after Russia and Belarus.

This corruption was Vucic's undoing on November 1, 2024, when the newly renovated train station canopy in Serbia's second largest city, Novi Sad, collapsed, killing 16 people. The tragedy sparked the largest wave of protests in Serbia to date.

Today it comes to its climax. Vucic has to face the independent student list in the parliamentary elections. He resigned as president because his second and last possible term would have expired next year. Now he wants to become prime minister again through a kind of power maneuver, as he did in the years 2014 to 2017.

Most experts predict an exciting duel against the students - with an open outcome.

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This topic in the program: tagesschau.de | Portrait of Vucic before the election in Serbia | Oct 25, 2026 | 05:10 am