Serbia votes as ruling party faces student-led anti-corruption list
Most of the student list’s 250 candidates are experts from fields including academia and the arts with little political experience
Polls opened in Serbia on Sunday in what is set to be its most fiercely contested parliamentary election in more than 14 years, as a student-led movement seeks to oust the party of veteran leader Aleksandar Vucic.
The snap vote is the culmination of nearly two years of student-led protests sparked by the 2024 collapse of a canopy at Novi Sad railway station that killed 16 people – a tragedy widely blamed on corruption.
The disaster triggered some of Serbia’s largest protests since the fall of strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
The Students’ List, a selection of candidates backed by the largely leaderless movement, now poses the biggest challenge to Vucic’s right-wing populist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has dominated politics throughout its tenure.
