What next for Serbia's election winners?

Serbia's Student List movement won an emphatic election victory last weekend on an anti-corruption platform, defeating the party of former president Aleksandar Vučić.

But what comes next for the country's incoming government, which has yet to decide who will lead it?

A clear majority of Serbians elected a new government in last Sunday’s parliamentary election, voting for the Student List movement over the country's former president, Aleksandar Vučić, and his United Serbia coalition.

Most polls had given the Student List a one or two-point lead over the ruling party.

Yet, the movement won the election by more than 13 percentage points, with 53% of the popular vote. That translates to a clear majority of 140 out of 250 seats in the Serbian national assembly.

Mr Vučić, who served as either prime minister or president since 2014, and his party, won about 39% of the vote. They will hold 104 seats in opposition.

The student-led movement emerged in November 2024 after 16 people, including two children, died when a concrete canopy collapsed at a renovated train station in the northern city of Novi Sad.

Protestors alleged that the shoddy work was caused by endemic corruption and a lack of transparency in the awarding of public contracts.

People from different professions soon joined mass protests across the country, demanding an end to corrupt practices, more transparency from public institutions, and the resignation of then-president Vučić and his political establishment.

Almost two years later, the political movement that emerged from that tragedy is set to enter government.

However, unlike the Tisza party in neighbouring Hungary, which had a recognisable leader in Péter Magyar throughout its parliamentary election campaign earlier this year, the Student List campaigned without a leader and, since its very inception has taken a collective approach to decision-making based on debates, assemblies and votes.

Serbia's Electoral Commission is yet to announce the official result, but once that happens, the newly elected lawmakers will have 30 days to form a government.

If that deadline is not met, the deadline extends to 90 days.

Bringing back the rule-of-law, abiding by the constitution and "putting the house in order" are the incoming government's priorities, Ivan Vejvoda, a Serbian political scientist, told RTÉ News.

"The first order of business will be reforming the security services," said Mr Vejvoda, the co-founder of Europe's Futures Initiative, a Vienna-based civic organisation that promotes democracy across the continent.

He described Serbia during the Vučić era as "a captured state where democracy had backslid."

The Student List movement campaigned under the slogan of "Serbia or the mafia" and promised to establish independent police bodies to investigate corruption, rather than the current system where cases are reported directly to the interior ministry.

The movement also promised to improve judiciary's independence and depoliticise public institutions by removing senior leaders who were appointed by the former government, led by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

Earlier this week, one of the movement's newly elected lawmakers, Jovo Bakić, told Serbian newspaper Danas: "We must sever all the state's connections with organised crime, and then suppress organised crime, which can never be completely eradicated, to the greatest extent possible."

Reforming the judiciary and security services are long-term projects but reform of Serbia's public media, another of the Student List's electoral pledges, is likely to be more swift.

The country's public television broadcaster, RTS, towed a solidly pro-SNS line during its years in government and a number of recent independent reports, including one published by the European Commission in 2024, found that the broadcaster gave little airtime to opposition views.

In an open letter published last Tuesday, the Student List demanded the resignation of the broadcaster's director-general and senior editorial staff.

"Citizens have the right to truthful, complete, impartial and timely information on matters of public importance. When a public service broadcaster subordinates the exercise of this right to the interests of political power, it undermines public trust, deepens social divisions and deviates from its primary role," read the statement.

The day after the historic vote, a news anchor from regional public broadcaster RNS issued an apology to viewers, live on air, saying the station had "remained silent, turned a blind eye, provided one-sided information, reported uncritically, failed to ask the right questions, or asked no questions at all".

But before any changes are made to the way Serbia's public institutions are run, the movement need to decide which candidate from among their ranks will be the country's next prime minister, as well as nominate cabinet ministers.

Most of the Student List's elected representatives were not involved in politics previously.

Almost half of its 250 candidates who stood for election came from academic or education-related backgrounds.

Doctors, lawyers, engineers, journalists and agricultural experts are among the movement's newly elected members.

So far, three main figures have emerged for the role of prime minister:

Ilija Srdanović, a cardiologist and professor from Novi Sad, the city where the 2024 tragedy occurred.

In an interview with Radio Free Europe earlier this week, Mr Srdanović said the Student List remains "committed to European integration" and that the new government will "fully align" Serbia’s domestic policy with EU rule-of-law norms and human rights legislation.

He supports continued dialogue with Kosovo and said the new government would respect agreements signed by previous Serbian governments.

However, he did not confirm whether the new government would implement the Brussels Agreement, an accord brokered by the EU in 2013 that created a framework for normalising relations between Belgrade and Pristina.

The Student List opposes Kosovan independence and views the country as an integral part of Serbia, which puts it on course for a clash with the European Union.

Serbia opened formal accession negotiations in 2014, but those talks stalled due to a lack of progress on rule-of-law reforms and worsening relations with Kosovo, also a potential candidate to join the bloc.

Another name for the role of prime minister is Dejan Šoškić, a former governor of the National Bank of Serbia and a university professor.

He resigned as the head of the national bank in 2012 after the then SNS-ruled government enacted a law that reduced the independence of the institution and brought it under tighter control of parliament, a move criticised by the EU at the time.

If Mr Šoškić does not get the top job, then he would seem an obvious choice for the role of finance minister given his international experience in dealing with the World Bank, the IMF and the European Union earlier in his career.

And then there is Dejan Bodiroga, a former professional basketball player.

He too has no previous experience in government, but is one of the more recognisable figures from the movement.

Whichever candidate emerges as the movement's choice for prime minister, he or she will lead a technocratic government staffed by experts.

Economists, finance experts, engineering and agriculture professors are set to be among its cabinet ministers.

The movement will want to get started on implementing its reforms from day one. Serbia's voters expect no less.

However, as has been the case in Poland and Hungary, reforming public institutions staffed with senior appointees loyal to a previous government is difficult and far from swift.