BELGRADE: Serbia’s ruling party lost parliamentary snap elections, veteran leader Aleksandar Vucic said Sunday, citing preliminary results showing the student-backed protest movement surging ahead.
“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 is the culmination of 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 triggered some of Serbia’s largest protests since the fall of strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
Voters cast ballots in record numbers on Sunday, with the country recording its highest parliamentary election turnout in more than three decades.
As soon as Vucic conceded defeat, celebrations erupted on the streets of the capital; passing cars honked their horns as crowds began to party near the election commission’s headquarters.
Meanwhile, at the Students’ List headquarters, supporters applauded, cried, and hugged 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.
