After Election Win, Serbia's Student Movement Demands Resignations of Police, Intelligence and Judiciary Chiefs

Serbia's victorious student-led movement has called for top figures in the police, the intelligence agency and the judiciary to stand down, days after ousting the party of former president Aleksandar Vučić from power.

Standing in Pioneers' Park opposite parliament, newly elected MPs on the Student List demanded the immediate dismissal of all police officers who had broken the law, singling out the heads of the police, the BIA security agency and the anti-terror unit.

It is not often that a European country votes to fully reset its political system overnight. Serbian voters have handed that task to a group of novice politicians made up of intellectuals, professors, artists, athletes and as many as 12 medical doctors and surgeons.

But the handover of power will take weeks, and the movement is concerned that evidence of possible wrongdoing could be destroyed in that time. Just days ago, the park where they stood on Thursday was a tent camp of Vučić loyalists outside his office. Within hours of his admitting defeat on Sunday night the camp was dismantled, and on Monday morning a team of volunteers moved in to clean up.

Volunteers came out in force to clean the park. Marija Milovanović, 25, scrubbing a park bench, called it just the first wave of 'spring cleaning', saying the newcomers were excited but ready to do the work too.

The student movement emerged from protests following the fatal collapse of a railway station canopy that killed 16 people in November 2024 in Novi Sad, Serbia's second-largest city. Their aim was to bring those responsible to justice and investigate the widespread corruption claims blamed for one of the most tragic events in Serbia's modern history.

Under their Student Plan, the movement promises to 'halt the plunder, return stolen goods to the state budget, and invest directly in education and the economy'. The removal of Vučić loyalists has already begun at state broadcaster RTS, where director Manja Grčić has stepped down. Newly elected MP Mirjana Nikolić said Serbian citizens had the right to truthful information and that RTS had served the government's interests for years. The new MPs have also set their sights on replacing the head of Telekom Srbija, Vladimir Lučić.

Vučić loyalist Ana Brnabić, currently Serbia's acting president, has accused her opponents of choosing 'revolutionary justice, not rule of law' and of aiming to shut down all the media they dislike.

But one of the next government's best-known MPs, former central bank governor Dejan Šoškić, argues that key reforms need to be in place fast. The economist, who served as governor between 2010 and 2012, said that in the first six months he would like to see the media scene liberated, the fight against corruption under way, institutions operating as prescribed by law, and a lustration law introduced — meaning a ban from public office for 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, as all of Serbia's main pillars of authority have been held by Vučić and his party for so long. Ultimately, he believes the new administration will have to build bridges to the segments that have been operating well in the past.

All 141 successful candidates were chosen by students from universities across Serbia through a lengthy, secretive and carefully crafted process, and tasked with implementing the movement's plan for a complete rebuild of the country. Radomir Saičić, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Belgrade and another prominent figure on the list, told the BBC that while practical mechanisms will be developed on the go, the new MPs will stick to the students' 1,200-page detailed plan; parliament makes the decisions, but they will value the students' opinion and work closely with them.

The election winners are newcomers to politics with no obvious leader, facing complex challenges including Serbia's balancing act on the international stage. Serbia is both a candidate to join the European Union and maintains close relations with Russia. The EU was quick to welcome the Student List victory and promised to back reforms on the rule of law, media freedom and the fight against corruption. Yet EU integration occupies a strikingly minor place in the students' manifesto, which describes the bloc merely as Serbia's 'most important economic partner'.

For years Belgrade has balanced its foreign policy between the EU and its eastern partners, Russia and China, standing out in Europe by not imposing sanctions on Moscow since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In return Serbia has been rewarded with preferential gas prices, and Vladimir Putin publicly endorsed Vučić's bid to remain in power. Šoškić said Serbia had its own experience with sanctions in the 1990s and knows they mostly harm ordinary people and do not affect a state's policies. The new government's initial focus will most likely be on domestic reform, with the clock ticking before presidential elections due in December. Vučić, legally barred from a third term as president, has promised his defeated Serbian Progressive Party will fight back: 'We will beat them much faster than they can even imagine.'