People in Belgrade celebrated following Serbia's Aleksandar Vucic speech conceding defeat to a student-led protest movement in a historic election on Sunday (October 25) that ends his long grip on power and heralds a new political era in the Balkan country.
View this post on Instagram
Student List candidate Radomir Saicic said that "after two years of suffering, of battling for rights, for freedom, for justice... we are going to turn all this and to start building a free and prosperous country where our children will live with us, not live abroad and continue their lives elsewhere because now they have opportunity to live here with us. So we are very happy of course and proud of their achievement."
Vucic, a populist and nationalist, has dominated Serbian politics as prime minister or president since 2014.
But he called snap elections in September after almost two years of student-led demonstrations against perceived corruption and creeping authoritarianism triggered by the deaths of 16 people when a train station canopy collapsed in the city of Novi Sad in 2024.
Within moments of his announcement, the streets of Belgrade erupted in celebration. Tens of thousands of people thronged along the city's main boulevards, with cars honking, people dancing and shouting "We are free!".
&uuid=(email))