Barely an hour and a half after the polls closed, Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat. Ten days later it is clear that losing power and letting go of the state are two different things – and that the new government will be judged by how efficiently it starts restoring the rule of law.
Full circle
Aleksandar Vučić gave a telling concession speech on the evening of October 25. Hours earlier, while voting was still under way, riot police in armored vehicles had sealed off part of central Belgrade, ostensibly to guard the Republic Electoral Commission – from whom, remains unclear. At the same time, masked thugs were again swarming around Pionirski Park, the para-state camp that had become the regime’s last refuge.
Instead of the refusal to recognize the result and the violent escalation many had feared, Vučić – no longer president, having resigned weeks earlier to run for prime minister – conceded. But true to form after almost 15 years of absolute rule, he said nothing about popular sentiment, political accountability or the need for change. No “we have heard the people, we will do better and come back stronger.”
Rather, he went full circle, traveling back to 2008, when he broke with his political alma mater, the extreme-right Serbian Radical Party, to found the populist, seemingly pro-EU Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). In a cynical display, he openly taunted citizens for the terrible choice they had made. As his scarecrow he picked Nataša Kandić, a human rights activist who played no role in this election: “I congratulate Nataša Kandić, her policy has won,” he said, adding that she had won with enormous foreign support.
He went on to claim that his opponents had lied about everything – from predictions that he would flee or go into hiding to the “sound cannon,” the acoustic weapon allegedly used against protesters in Belgrade on March 15, 2025. Behind those lies, he suggested, stood various European countries and the “American deep state” opposed to President Trump.
Since then, he has been rebranding himself as “leader of the opposition” – the hate-spreading tabloids still loyal to him need a title for him, after all. Free of institutional restraints, he promises to fight more fiercely against the “color revolution” supposedly orchestrated from abroad against the country and himself as its supreme protector. In practice, this means a full return to the ideological roots of a far-right politician: stoking the most nationalist sentiments in parts of the population, using them for his interest group’s benefit, and obstructing the incoming government, which he already accuses of “revolutionary terror.”
In that world, even the collapse of the station canopy in Novi Sad on November 1, 2024, could have been sabotage meant to trigger the color revolution – a possibility Vučić himself said a year ago he “did not exclude.” The irony is hard to miss: had his own institutions held those responsible to account, none of what followed would have happened.
The new leader of the opposition also leaves a legacy from his days in office: a string of pardons. On September 27, the day he resigned, he pardoned 49 people, whose names were kept from the public until a week after the election. He claimed that these were persons unknown to the public. According to names now published by the courts, however, they include Dijana Hrkalović, the former interior ministry state secretary who stood trial for influence peddling and whom investigative journalists have linked to organized crime; a man accused of running over a student and causing her serious bodily harm; and several people accused of attacking protesters, publicly known and SNS-affiliated. Vučić framed the decree as even-handed, since it also covered twelve Novi Sad activists the regime had branded a “terrorist group.” Pardoning people before any verdict is abolition, not mercy – legal experts described it as the president stepping outside the bounds of the Constitution – and a clear misuse of the institution of pardon.
In addition, on November 2, Vučić declared that he never signs anything to do with money, so nothing can be found against him – hardly what an innocent man would choose to say.
The clock is ticking
Since November 1 the count has been complete. After the vote was rerun at 53 polling stations, the Republic Electoral Commission puts the Student List at 53.01 percent and the SNS-led “United Serbia” at 38.98 percent. Once the commission formally proclaims the final result – expected within days – parliament must convene within 30 days, and a government must then be formed within 90 days.
The upcoming presidential election follows its own clock. Ana Brnabić, acting president since Vučić resigned – and for years his prime minister, a wannabe Medvedev to Vučić’s Putin, of sorts – must call it by November 27; the vote has to take place 30 to 60 days after it is called, and no later than December 27. If no candidate wins an absolute majority, a runoff between the top two follows two weeks later. Brnabić may serve as acting president for three months at most; once the new parliament elects its speaker, that person takes over the role until a new president is sworn in.
Vučić has already announced that the SNS will not take part in the presidential election, calling it a “farce.” A more plausible explanation: after years of building a personality cult around one man, the elite around him has no other candidate who could remotely threaten whoever the Student List puts forward.
Costly inheritance
The para-state does not disappear with an election result. In power or in opposition makes little difference to an elite that regards the country – above all its economy – as its property. But even before the actual transfer of power, the first days have shown panic-stricken behavior across the police, the judiciary and business.
Tellingly, Alta Bank, which amassed wealth and influence as a preferred address under SNS rule, has lost its license, and its owner Davor Macura was detained on November 2. He is suspected of removing 45 billion dinars – more than 380 million euros – from the bank’s vault. There are indications that this is only the tip of the iceberg, both in financial terms and in the depth of the ties between state and crime.
Alta is only the most visible part of the inheritance. EXPO 2027 is due to open in Belgrade on May 15. Its contracts, like those for other flagship projects, were concluded under a special law without regular public procurement rules, and the Fiscal Council has warned of cost increases of almost 100 billion dinars across EXPO and other major projects whose causes remain unknown. Add opaque long-term contracts and rising public debt, and the new government’s room for maneuvering is narrow.
Transitional accountability
Shredders have been busy ever since the results came in. The staff union at the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund (PIO) says documents that could incriminate its management have been shredded behind locked doors, day and night. The Student List has called on whistleblowers to report the destruction of records during the transition.
Supreme Public Prosecutor Zagorka Dolovac, notorious for her professional invisibility during SNS rule, has instructed prosecutors nationwide to request urgent police action to protect official records. The arrests have begun: on November 1, police detained Marko Kričak, head of the Criminal Investigation Directorate. Students accused him of abusing protesters in custody; one testified that he slapped her and threatened her with rape in the government building’s garage. Their complaints went nowhere for over a year – he was finally arrested over his handling of an unrelated murder investigation.
The students are watching all this with caution rather than triumph. The group from the Faculty of Organizational Sciences in Belgrade pointed out that the old government is still in office as a caretaker: the arrests are either institutions finally doing their job, or score-settling within the former regime. “Full accountability is still to come. No one untouchable. No matter who is in power.”
Serbia, its neighbors and the EU
Then there is the incoming government’s international and regional standing. Doubters point out that a list of experts backed by a student movement is not a conventional political actor. Just as Vučić – a conventional actor in his own right, backed by international counterparts and shared interests – did not know how to defeat it at the ballot box, conventional actors in EU capitals, fixated on their own backyards, will have trouble knowing how to deal with it.
There are signs that the EU will suddenly become more inclined to pursue value-based policies towards candidate country Serbia, impatiently asking the new government about its stance on Kosovo, the war crimes of the 1990s and relations with Russia. This comes after many key member states long tolerated an increasingly autocratic regime – one that in 2024 tried to persuade its citizens that the international community regards Serbs as a “genocidal people,” and that only recently buried Ratko Mladić, convicted of genocide, with state honors and senior officials in attendance. Many will be suspicious at best; the harshest critics will call it hypocrisy.
What gives reason for optimism is that the first statements by Ilija Srdanović, the cardiologist who headed the Student List, have been among the most reasonable to come out of Belgrade in many years. He told the Croatian news agency Hina that the new government will not exploit open issues with Croatia the way Vučić, his associates and some media did, and that good relations with neighbors come first – without them, one cannot expect good relations with major powers either. Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković called him the morning after the vote – even though he, too, complained a few days later about a “lack of European flags at the student rallies.”
On the EU, Srdanović has promised to continue accession and to bring domestic policy fully in line with chapters 23 and 24 on the judiciary and fundamental rights, noting that the previous government lost 20 percent of public support for EU integration over 15 years. On Russia, he says such questions must be settled through open public dialogue, not by one man; during the campaign the list ruled out sanctions. For Brussels, that should be an uncomfortable but honest starting point – after all, it patiently tolerated the same no-sanctions policy throughout Vučić’s stabilitocracy.
Between plenum and parliament
The student plenums vetted every candidate – non-partisan experts mostly from the ranks of academia – and their list ran as a citizens’ group, not a party. No student will take a seat in the new parliament, yet the plenums expect a say in what happens there. Students and MPs are due to pick the cabinet together; Srdanović, despite heading the list, is not its prime minister by default.
Serbia has seen nothing like this before, and the arrangement is fragile. A leaderless movement built on direct democracy must now carry a government of majorities, hierarchies, a tight budget and the economic burdens left behind by the previous regime. If the plenums grip their MPs too tightly, they become an unelected shadow government – an easy target for the new opposition. If they take a more lenient approach, the government loses the base that won it the election.
The students’ safeguard is a signed pledge. Each candidate confirms they never profited from the old regime and will not vote against the list’s program, and any breach counts as resignation.
The movement’s next tests
The movement has built its own expiry date into its structures. The citizens’ association “Student List,” registered in spring 2026, has a fixed lifespan that ends on May 1, 2028 – a signal that the list is meant as a transitional instrument, not a new permanent party.
Through their plenums, the students face three tasks in the coming weeks: helping to shape the cabinet, positioning themselves for the presidential election due by December 27, and redefining their own role.
The presidential race is a particular test. The movement has signaled it will field its own candidate. With the SNS boycotting, it must avoid a low-turnout contest without real competition, which the SNS would use to question the new president’s legitimacy from day one.
The citizens’ assemblies (zborovi) that sprang up across the country in 2025 may matter even more. Whenever the next local elections come, they will be the natural vehicle for change – and a recruiting pool for a new generation of local politicians.
Leader of what opposition?
The new parliament will be an unusual place – two blocs and a few minority MPs. The parties that stood aside for the Student List will be sitting this term out, hoping their support has earned them credibility they can cash in at the next local, provincial or parliamentary election. A genuine parliamentary life, with ideological debate and a pluralist opposition, will have to be rebuilt almost from scratch.
Vučić wants back in through the opposition benches. In his bid to return to power, he will undoubtedly count on the Student List’s ideological diversity turning into division. And he will be waiting on the right, where he started, to welcome the defectors he hopes for, this time with no need to keep up appearances abroad.
More likely, though, the SNS will fall apart. Stripped of its aura of invincibility and of the hitherto absolute control over the state apparatus, it is an empty shell. Its 39 percent was won in its own world – with state resources harnessed to the campaign and the overwhelming and omnipresent narrative of “the party is the state is the party” that it built so devotedly. That amounts to much less in the real world. And the real world seems to have finally caught up with Serbian politics.
The myth of Vučić as a brilliant strategist, always several moves ahead of his opponents – self-created and self-perpetuated, but sometimes absorbed even by his staunchest critics – is evaporating in real time. He was but an unscrupulous politician who waited patiently for his turn, and the ride is over. That does not make the bill he leaves behind any smaller. It is enormous.
