Belgrade (AFP) – The historic victory in late October of Serbia's leaderless student movement, which ended 14 years of right-wing populist rule, capped years of anti-corruption protests led by people fleeing the spotlight.

Published on: 09/11/2026 - 00:38

The final results awarded 140 seats out of 250 to the Student List in parliament, enough to govern alone.

The future parliamentary majority was born from protests sparked by the collapse of a concrete canopy at the recently renovated Novi Sad railway station in November 2024, which left 16 dead. The disaster, widely blamed on corruption, sparked some of the biggest protests in Serbia since the fall of President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

Demands for a transparent investigation turned into a vast anti-corruption movement that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets. Here are the stories of some of those who took part.

“All equal”

“It is thanks to unity, and the fact of not putting certain individuals forward, that we managed to hold on,” Vukasin Djinovic, a student at the Faculty of Sciences in Novi Sad, told AFP. “We were all equal.”

It was also a strategy to avoid being targeted by pro-government media who, he said, "constantly tried to find leaders to dismantle the organization."

The same principle then shaped the student-backed list that won the election. The candidates were chosen by students at assemblies, most of them academics and professionals with little or no political experience.

“They were not chosen based on their party membership or loyalty, but solely on the basis of their moral and professional integrity,” he stressed.

“Nothing to blackmail us”

Aleksa Stankovic, a philosophy student in Belgrade, spent two years photographing the movement, assemblies and marches, as well as the methods used by the police against the demonstrators.

“They called us terrorists, insulted us, tried to blackmail us. But they had nothing to blackmail us with. We are young, we are studying, we don’t even have a job yet,” he said. “We remain critical and will keep a close eye on the people we have elected.”

“Sleep in peace”

"After two years, I can finally feel at peace. I can now sleep peacefully and my mother and father can also rest a little," said Strahinja Stankovic, a political science student in Belgrade.

He helped organize the first student march to Novi Sad – a campaign that saw students travel across the country on foot, hundreds of kilometers to reach areas mainly informed by pro-government media.

In June 2025, he was arrested during a road blockade in Belgrade and spent hours handcuffed on concrete.

“Feel dignity”

For Nikola Marovic, a professor at the Faculty of Technology in Novi Sad, these two years helping students left him "almost completely emotionally drained", but proud.

“For the first time, I truly feel dignity in having taught the students who took to the streets.” “We don’t need one leader in this country. We need millions of little leaders – and that’s what we got with this movement.”

© 2026 AFP

The content you are trying to access does not exist or is no longer available.