The mass student march is crossing Serbia for the final showdown with Vučić

In Serbia, the student movement – which is set to challenge President Aleksandar Vučić’s regime in the elections on Sunday 25 October – is taking to the streets once again for its final, major demonstration ahead of the vote. The show of strength promises to be impressive: students and citizens will begin marching peacefully from today towards Belgrade, where they expect to arrive on Thursday 22nd, after a full week on the road. The gathering point will be Slavija Square, which has been the scene of all the protests over the last two years. The first column of demonstrators, coming from the east, sets off today from Zaječar. Three columns will set off from western Serbia: one will set out on 18 October from Gornji Milanovac; the second column will leave Valjevo on 19 October; and, also on Sunday, the third will set off from Šabac. The final column, coming from the north, will set off from Novi Sad on 20 October.

The students managed to put forward a list of 250 names – lawyers, university lecturers, representatives of civil society – and also secured the withdrawal from the elections of almost all the parties opposing Vučić, with the aim of concentrating their forces and votes on a single list, their own. But the grassroots committees of the movement that originated in the universities are well aware that, if they are to have any real hope of winning, they must make themselves known in the countryside and small towns of Serbia, where the regime-controlled media have never mentioned them throughout these two years of protests. So, they have decided to set off on a march covering many kilometres, with the aim of crossing the heart of the country and winning over voters one by one. ‘The final demonstration before we rid ourselves of them,’ wrote the student organisers on social media, promoting the rally with the slogan ‘Victory beckons’.

Although some independent polls, when the students presented their list in mid-September, put the Movement at around 48 per cent, as the election date draws nearer, the forecasts are being revised downwards. ‘I estimate the student list at 37–40 per cent and Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party at 48 per cent – says Giorgio Fruscione, head of the ISPI’s Balkan Desk – according to these polls, the current governing coalition should secure a majority, thanks in part to the support of its Socialist allies, who could be the only party capable of clearing the electoral threshold.” If this were to be the outcome on Sunday 25 October, the students’ result ‘would still be a historic one,’ says Fruscione. ‘In the last 14 years – that is, since Vučić’s party has been in power – no opposition party or leader has ever garnered such a high level of support. In the last parliamentary elections in 2023, when the opposition coalition achieved its best result, it did not exceed 23 per cent.”

Admittedly, Vucic’s Progressive Party has an extremely powerful electoral machine: ‘The SNS,’ explains the ISPI researcher, ‘is one of the parties with the highest number of members in the world: around one in nine voters is a member. With voter turnout in Serbia having hovered around 50 per cent in recent years, if every SNS member turns out to vote and brings at least one other relative with them, it is easy for Vučić to reach the 48 per cent predicted by the polls.”

Among university committees, however, optimism remains very high. As well as students and civil society – which has now mobilised against government corruption – the list put together by Serbia’s finest young people is in fact counting on bringing non-voters to the polls. Provided there is no electoral fraud or intimidation: the delegation from the PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe), which has just returned from Belgrade, stated that it had noted ‘hostile and aggressive rhetoric directed against opposition activists, representatives of civil society and journalists’, and that it had been informed of persistent ‘and credible’ allegations of surveillance against them. On Sunday 25th, at the polling stations, the OSCE is ready to deploy 80 parliamentarians. ‘Electoral fraud,’ argues Fruscione, ‘is one of the tools the Serbian regime resorts to in order to achieve not so much a result, but the desired result. Once the polls have closed, much will depend on how Vucic handles the election result: he may not be satisfied and could resort to planting infiltrators amongst the protesters, with the aim of then cracking down hard on the students. Nor do I rule out the possibility of street clashes even before the vote.”