For weeks, the streets of Serbia were teeming with young people rallying against the government. At the height of the protests in March 2025, more than 100,000 took to the streets. The student movement had called for early elections for nearly two years, and President Aleksandar Vucic, who resigned on Sunday, finally heeded their call earlier this month.
He announced snap parliamentary elections for October 25. With the elections originally not due until December 2027, the early vote is seen as an attempt by governing populists to cling to power despite widespread discontent. Vucic is vying for the prime minister’s post, a role he has held before, appearing to yield to protesters’ demands not out of goodwill but in the hopes of ushering in a result that keeps him in office, analysts say.
But experts warn that elections will hardly solve the underlying political tensions gripping the country, triggered after 16 people were killed in 2024 when a concrete canopy collapsed at a railway station. Student protesters blamed the disaster on government negligence and alleged corruption. The move “is essentially about reducing political risk”, Viktor Stamenkovic, a researcher at Belgrade’s Institute for Political Studies, told Al Jazeera.
Vucic could stall no more – both the presidential and parliamentary vote would have had to be held next year. Vucic’s presidential term expires before the mandate of the current parliament, said Stamenkovic. Serbia’s recent political history explains the order of the elections – the parliamentary before the presidential, the analyst added.
Presidential elections can fundamentally alter the parliamentary dynamics that follow – which is how Vucic’s party came to power, Stamenkovic explained. Vucic cannot run for a third term under Serbia’s constitution, and no other SNS figure is as popular as him. Vucic has built a personalised political system centred on himself rather than his party or any successor, said Stamenkovic.
She cited irregularities in past elections, such as vote buying by the SNS, documented by election observers and human rights organisations, and feared that the next elections will see an “escalation of these tactics, now that the student movement is actually threatening to win the election and take power from Vucic’s party”. Since 2024, the governing party has lost a sense of political legitimacy, said Stamenkovic. The youth movement recently submitted their election list to state election authorities after a jubilant march through the capital of Belgrade, formally entering the race.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
