Serbia’s Vucic Concedes Parliamentary Poll as Record Turnout Caps Protests’ Momentum

BELGRADE — Serbia’s ruling party lost a parliamentary snap election, veteran leader Aleksandar Vucic said Sunday, citing preliminary results indicating that the student-backed protest movement was surging.

“Based on a stratified sample, it is clear that we lost these elections,” Vucic told supporters at his party headquarters in Belgrade.

The snap vote capped nearly two years of student-led protests after the 2024 collapse of a canopy at Novi Sad railway station that killed 16 people. The disaster has been widely blamed on corruption and sparked some of Serbia’s largest protests since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

• Voter turnout reached record levels, the highest participation in parliamentary elections in more than three decades in Serbia.
• Following Vucic’s concession, celebrations erupted in Belgrade, with opposition supporters expressing joy and relief in the streets.

Voters cast ballots in record numbers on Sunday, and as soon as Vucic conceded defeat, celebrations erupted on the streets of the capital. Passing cars honked their horns as crowds began to gather near the election commission’s headquarters.

At the Students’ List headquarters, supporters applauded, cried, and embraced each other, chanting “Victory, victory!”

“I feel incredible. I feel as though I am finally living in a free country,” student Mila Martic told AFP from the List’s headquarters.

Source link