Serbia's Student List MPs demand resignations of police, intelligence and judiciary chiefs after election win

On Thursday, newly elected MPs from Serbia's Student List stood in Pioneers' Park, across from parliament, and called for the immediate dismissal of every police officer who had broken the law. They named the heads of the police, the BIA security agency and the anti-terror unit as the figures who should go. The demand came only days after the movement ousted Aleksandar Vučić's party from power.

The park itself tells part of the story. Only a few days earlier it held a tent camp of Vučić loyalists, set up outside his office. Within hours of his admitting defeat on Sunday night, the camp was taken down. On Monday morning volunteers arrived to clean up. Marija Milovanović, 25, scrubbed a bench and called it the first wave of spring cleaning, adding that the new ones were coming and that the volunteers were excited but ready to do it too.

The movement grew out of protests after a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad, Serbia's second largest town, in November 2024, killing 16 people. Protesters wanted those responsible brought to justice and the widespread corruption claims blamed for the disaster investigated. Their Student Plan promises to halt the plunder, return stolen goods to the state budget, and invest directly in education and the economy.

The people charged with delivering it are novices. All 141 successful candidates were chosen by students from universities across Serbia through a lengthy, secretive and carefully crafted process. They include intellectuals, professors, artists, athletes and as many as 12 medical doctors and surgeons. The plan took months for a diverse group of students to agree on, and the MPs, not the students, must now carry it out. Radomir Saičić, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Belgrade, told the BBC the MPs will stick to the students' 1200-page plan while developing practical mechanisms as they go, and that they would work closely with the students.

Timing is a worry. The handover of power will take weeks, and the movement fears evidence of possible wrongdoing could be destroyed in the meantime. Changes have already begun. At the state broadcaster RTS, director Manja Grčić has stepped down. MP Mirjana Nikolić said citizens have a right to truthful information and that RTS had served the government for years. The MPs also want to replace Vladimir Lučić, head of Telekom Srbija.

The outgoing camp is pushing back. Ana Brnabić, a Vučić loyalist and currently Serbia's acting president, accused her opponents of choosing revolutionary justice rather than the rule of law, and of aiming to shut down all the media they dislike. Dejan Šoškić, a well-known MP and an economist who was central bank governor from 2010 to 2012, wants fast action. In the first six months he hopes to see the media scene liberated, corruption fought along the way, institutions operating as the law prescribes, and a lustration law introduced. By lustration he means barring from public office members of the Vučić government or party apparatus found to have violated Serbians' rights.

Strahinja Subotić of the Belgrade-based European Policy Centre warns that such a purge will take time, because Vučić and his party have long held all of Serbia's main pillars of authority. He expects the new administration to have to build bridges to the segments that have worked well in the past.

Abroad, the winners inherit a delicate balance. Serbia is a candidate for EU membership, but its bid has long stalled while Western Balkan neighbours advance, and it keeps close ties with Russia. It has not imposed sanctions on Moscow since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and in return has enjoyed preferential gas prices. Putin publicly endorsed Vučić's bid to stay in power. The EU quickly welcomed the Student List win and promised to back reforms on rule of law, media freedom and corruption, yet the students' manifesto mentions the bloc only as Serbia's most important economic partner. Šoškić pointed to Serbia's experience of UN sanctions in the 1990s, saying they mostly harm ordinary people and do not change state policy.

The clock is already running. Presidential elections are due in December. Vučić is legally barred from a third term, but he has vowed that his defeated Serbian Progressive Party will fight back, saying they will beat the students much faster than they can imagine.