Serbia election: Huge crowds at students' final rally as Vucic holds rival event
Three days before Sunday's parliamentary election, Serbia's students held their last major rally in Belgrade. Polls point to a close race with Vucic's SNS.
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Huge crowds gathered in Belgrade on Thursday for the final campaign rally of the student-led "Student List". The Associated Press reported hundreds of thousands of people on central Slavija Square and several nearby blocks, while Al Jazeera put the crowd at tens of thousands. Supporters waved "students are winning" flags and blew whistles. Candidate and university professor Jugoslav Gasic told the crowd: "We are putting an end to 14 years of humiliation, chaos and betrayal." The list is fielding 250 candidates for the 250-seat parliament.
At the same time, Aleksandar Vucic addressed several thousand supporters at a sports hall in another part of the city, AP reported. According to Al Jazeera, he resigned as president in September to run for prime minister. "Let us go out and defeat them! Defeat them decisively!" he told supporters. On Radio Belgrade he predicted a "tough, uncertain struggle" for his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), AP reported.
Serbia has no reliable independent polling; according to AP, available surveys suggest a neck-and-neck race. Twenty-four civil society groups said conditions for free and fair elections were lacking. The protest movement emerged after a canopy collapsed at the Novi Sad railway station in November 2024, killing 16 people.