Belgrade Rally Marks Final Student Push Ahead of Serbia’s Tense Election

• The rally served as a final push before Serbia’s parliamentary election.
• Students have continued to protest against Aleksandar Vučić’s rule.

BELGRADE — Hundreds of thousands of supporters of Serbia’s protesting youth movement gathered Thursday at the final campaign rally ahead of a tense weekend parliamentary election, in a challenge to the Balkan nation’s powerful populist leader, Aleksandar Vučić.

Crowds streamed into Belgrade’s central Slavija Square from multiple directions, filling several blocks of streets around the area. The flag-waving, boisterous crowds chanted “Victory” in a wave of optimism ahead of Sunday’s early vote, held after almost two years of student-led protests against Vučić’s tight control of the country.

Support for the student movement has grown since the protests began in November 2024. The Students’ List electoral ticket was polling neck and neck with Vučić’s right-wing Serbian Progressive Party, despite the ruling populist party’s tight control over mainstream media and state institutions.

Drama student Natalija Stepanovic told the crowd that “three more days are left and they will pass.”

“So will fear, blackmail, injustice,” she added. “Tyrants will pass, like they always do, but the people of this country never will and they will stand tall as a monument to our joint struggle.”

Uncertainty looms over Sunday’s ballot

Analysts say that a close result could make the outcome uncertain and pave the way for potential post-election instability if both sides declare victory after polls close on Sunday. Vučić, who controls the police, has said that any unrest after the vote would be swiftly quelled.

Scores of students have been detained in the past two years as the government cracked down on the protests to curb them. Vučić has campaigned fiercely against opponents ahead of the election, accusing the students of being financed from abroad to destroy the country.

International election monitors and the European Union have expressed concern about the safety and fairness of the ballot, which has been marred by near-total government control over the media, reports of surveillance and cyberattacks on activists, and a deeply polarized society.

Vučić held his closing rally on Thursday at a sports hall in a separate part of Belgrade before several thousand people. He said he expects victory by a margin of several hundred thousand votes in favor of his Serbian Progressive Party. He then participated in a radio show before a scheduled evening appearance on the state broadcaster RTS.

“We’ll see what the result will be,” he conceded on Radio Belgrade, predicting a “tough, uncertain struggle.” Vučić added that “nothing special will happen” on election night and that “those who win will celebrate.”

While several minor parties are also in the race, observers say that the referendum-like atmosphere between Vučić and the students’ movement could push most of the other groups below the 3 percent threshold necessary to make it to the 250-member Parliament.

Student supporters say it “smells of victory.”

“There is hope for the first time in like 30 years,” Marina Popov Taparicki from Belgrade said. “People want change.”

Igor Zecevic, also from Belgrade, added that “the students woke us up, woke everybody up in this country, and we just have to do our thing now, we have to get out, we have to vote.”

Slavija Square in Belgrade was the scene of a huge anti-government protest last March. That rally ended in a sudden disruption that experts later said — and the government denied — involved the use of a sonic weapon against peaceful demonstrators.

Critics accuse Vučić of rampant corruption, ties to organized crime and a crackdown on democratic freedoms, particularly the media, which he has denied. Suspicion of high-level graft in state railway projects triggered student-led protests after a collapsed canopy at a train station in Serbia’s north killed 16 people in November 2024.

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