Serbia’s Student List preparing for talks on forming government despite no clear leader
Özet haber: Non-hierarchical movement is seeking to ‘rebuild society’ in Balkan country after years of authoritarian rule
Non-hierarchical movement is seeking to ‘rebuild society’ in Balkan country after years of authoritarian rule
Serbia’s triumphant but untested Student List movement is preparing to start talks on forming a government capable of reversing 14 years of increasingly authoritarian nationalist rule, after a seismic weekend election win.
Supporters of the movement, which has no experience of government, took to the streets in the west Balkan country on Monday after the strongman former president, Aleksandar Vučić, was defeated in a historic landslide.
Vučić conceded defeat late on Sunday, bringing his domination of Serbian politics to an abrupt end and capping two years of anti-government protests triggered by the collapse of a canopy at the Novi Sad railway station that killed 16 people.
With 100% of ballot samples counted, projected results from the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy in Belgrade showed the Student List on 53% of the vote, giving it 141 MPs in the 250-seat parliament, while Vučić’s Serbian Progressive party (SNS) won 39%, giving it 103. The remaining seats went to national minority party lists.
As yet, there are few clues as to how the winning movement, built around collective decision-making, will actually govern. Its candidates included academics, actors and farmers as well as students, but it is deliberately leaderless with no hierarchy, so it is unclear who it will appoint as the prime minister and cabinet.
Prominent Student List figures include: 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 on behalf of the List after its victory.
Much like Péter Magyar’s Tisza party, which ended Viktor Orbán’s 16 years of illiberal government in Hungary this spring, the List faces public institutions staffed with civil servants loyal to the outgoing regime, complicating the task of institutional overhaul.
“Everyone in the student movement, and every candidate on the list, has a complete and very clear understanding of the weight of the responsibility before us,” said Ana Mirković, a university educationist, psychologist and Student List candidate.
“We do not see the election result as gaining power and privileges, but as taking on a historic debt to our own people and to our own children.”
Mirković told the Guardian the movement’s first priority was “the social and psychological detoxification” of the country.
Vučić’s 14-year rule has been described as a “textbook regime” of autocracy, with his party extending control over the media, judiciary and other state institutions and elections marred by registration irregularities, media bias and voter bribes.
The students’ platform centres on a pledge to fight corruption and restore the rule of law, including creating an independent police unit accountable to prosecutors, not the interior ministry, and a purge of police officers linked to organised crime.
