BELGRADE — Serbia's student movement on Thursday demanded the resignations of top officials in the police, the intelligence agencies and the judiciary, as it prepares to take power after its historic election win last weekend against former strongman Aleksandar Vucic, the Associated Press reported. 'Changes are starting now,' student Filip Ubovic told a news conference in a park in front of the parliament building — an area that used to be a sealed-off camp of Vucic loyalists. 'Institutions belong to the citizens and the law applies to everyone.'
Source: Associated Press via KCAU 9
Reuters reported that representatives of the movement demanded the resignation of police commanders, officials in the state security and military intelligence agencies, and state prosecutors. They also called for cases linked to the dealings of Vucic's government to be reopened or speeded up — including the 2024 collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad that killed 16 people and ignited the student protests.
Source: Reuters via SRN News
'We demand an immediate audit of the current state of public institutions, ministries, public enterprises, the EPS electric power utility, and state funds, including finances, contracts, public procurement and assumed obligations,' Ubovic said, according to Reuters. The students urged public servants to preserve documentation and report suspicious activity during the transition, so that evidence of possible wrongdoing is not destroyed.
The movement also pressed Serbia's election authorities to declare the final results of Sunday's ballot without delay once the rerun at some 50 polling stations is held next Sunday, so that a new parliament and government can be formed quickly, AP said. The electoral commission's latest update on Wednesday put the students on 140 seats against 104 for the SNS, though the result is still not final.
Vucic held a news conference of his own on Thursday, accusing the election winners of 'revolutionary terror' after groups of people stormed the pro-government Informer TV station earlier in the week, AP reported. Vucic and the SNS deny allegations of corruption and repression, Reuters noted, even as Serbia has slipped down international press-freedom and corruption indexes under their rule.
The outgoing authorities remain in control while the formal handover runs its course, which will take several weeks. The head of Serbia's public RTS television resigned after the Student List victory, Reuters reported — an early sign of how quickly the old order's grip on state institutions is loosening. Serbia still does not know whom the leaderless student movement will name as prime minister.
The Students' List swept Sunday's parliamentary election against Vucic's right-wing Serbian Progressive Party, which had ruled unchallenged for 14 years. The movement grew out of nearly two years of protests that began after the Novi Sad canopy collapse, and it campaigned on rooting out corruption, freeing the media and restoring the rule of law.