Serbia's Student Movement Unseats Aleksandar Vučić After 14 Years in Power
A student-led electoral list is projected to win Serbia's snap parliamentary election after former president Aleksandar Vučić conceded on October 25, ending 14 years of his party's rule — the political payoff of two years of protests over the Novi Sad railway disaster, and a story that charted near the top of Chinese social media far beyond its Balkan origins.
The concession came late on the night of October 25, from a campaign headquarters in Belgrade. Standing before his Serbian Progressive Party's list banner, Aleksandar Vučić told supporters that projections showed the list he led, "Aleksandar Vučić — Unity for Serbia," had lost the snap parliamentary election, and that the student-run "Students, Win the List" (学生名单-学生获胜) would take a majority. Based on stratified sampling, he put the students at 135 to 140 of the 250 seats and his own list at about 105, then said he accepted the result and would serve in opposition. China's state media reported the concession within hours.
What made the night remarkable was not the arithmetic but who had produced it. "Students, Win the List" grew out of the campus movement that has shaken Serbian politics since November 2024, when a concrete canopy at Novi Sad's railway station collapsed and killed 16 people, and public fury over corruption and unanswered questions refused to die. Two years of school blockades and street protests ended, this month, in a ballot list that turned grievances into seats. Turnout ran to roughly 70 percent, the highest since Yugoslavia broke apart in 1992, according to Hong Kong outlet HK01.
A Chinese Weibo user compressed the arc into a few lines that spread widely on Monday morning: twelve years of rule, pried loose by a student anti-corruption movement — "this time the young people stopped shouting slogans and walked in to take the seats" (年轻人不喊口号了，直接进场夺议席). The post ended on a line that caught the mood: "A defeat loses one man; an election can overturn a generation" (一场败选，输的是一个人；一场选举，翻的是一代人).
The mechanics of the election carried their own sub-plot. Constitutionally barred from a third presidential term, Vučić had resigned the presidency in September, dissolved parliament, and run as his party's list leader and would-be prime minister — a "tactical change of seats" that was meant to convert the protest movement into a race he could win (one Chinese analyst walked through the manoeuvre). Early partial counts from 203 stations even put his list ahead at 54.69 percent to the students' 36.04, which is why the concession, once fuller sampling flipped the picture, landed with such force.
In his speech Vučić reached for a familiar script, arguing the result proved a "revolution" backed by "several European countries" and "American deep-state establishment forces," and calling the winners "puppets doing someone else's bidding" (International Finance News carried the quote). The students' list, which announced its own victory minutes after polls closed, has said nothing of the sort — its campaign was built on the railway disaster and the rule of law.
The story resonated far past Serbia's borders and Weibo's usual bubble: it sat near the top of Baidu's hot board and was carried in detail by Caixin and Yicai, while on Zhihu the leading question was what a student-led government would mean for Serbia's balancing act between Russia and the European Union (the question drew active debate). China's own outlets, CCTV and Xinhua included, reported the seat projections straight and without editorialising — a matter-of-fact treatment that itself says something about how the story is being read.
What happens next is the open question the night left. The students must convert a movement into a government, with coalition arithmetic and an economy to manage; Vučić's pledge to lead a "normal opposition" will be tested by a man who has never held that job. Belgrade's new era begins with the people who buried its dead asking for the accountability that started everything.