Serbia's Student List prepares coalition talks after landslide election win

Serbia's Student List movement is preparing to begin talks on forming a government after winning a landslide election that ended Aleksandar Vučić's long dominance of national politics. Supporters gathered in the west of the country on Monday after the result, which followed a campaign built around collective decision-making and opposition to years of increasingly authoritarian rule. Vučić conceded defeat late on Sunday, marking an abrupt end to his political control.

With 100% of ballot samples counted, projected results from the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy in Belgrade showed Student List on 53% of the vote, giving it 141 seats in the 250-seat parliament. Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party won 39%, or 103 seats, while the remaining seats went to national minority party lists. The movement is now expected to open coalition discussions, but it has not yet set out a clear governing structure.

The result is significant because the movement has no experience of government and no obvious leader. Its candidates included academics, actors and farmers as well as students, but it is deliberately leaderless and has no hierarchy. That leaves open the question of who would be nominated as prime minister and who would sit in the cabinet if it succeeds in forming a government.

The election also caps two years of anti-government protests that were triggered by the collapse of a canopy at Novi Sad railway station, an incident that killed 16 people. Those protests became a wider challenge to Vučić's rule and helped create the political conditions for the opposition breakthrough. The vote now raises the prospect of a major institutional shift in a country where public bodies have been shaped by the outgoing administration.

Student List has presented itself as a movement seeking to rebuild society after 14 years of nationalist rule. Among the prominent figures linked to it are Ilija Srdanović, a cardiologist who headed the candidate list, Dejan Šoškić, a former central bank governor, and Radomir Saičić, a chemistry professor at Belgrade University who spoke after the victory. The movement's non-hierarchical structure is central to its identity, but it may also complicate the transition from protest politics to government.

The challenge ahead is not only political but administrative. The movement will have to work with public institutions that, according to the broader context of the election, are staffed by civil servants loyal to the outgoing regime. That could make efforts to reverse policy, appoint ministers and establish authority more difficult in the early months of a new administration.

The scale of the parliamentary win, however, gives Student List a strong mandate to try. What remains unclear is how quickly coalition talks will begin and who will emerge as the movement's chief negotiator. It is also not yet known how it will translate its protest-driven platform into a functioning government with a prime minister and cabinet.

The next stage will show whether the movement can turn a historic election victory into stable rule.

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