Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic concedes election defeat to Opposition

The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, conceded defeat on Sunday in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his Government.

It was a seismic political shift in the Balkan country where Vucic, who had been endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and who denounced the student movement as a foreign-led attempt to unseat him, led with virtually absolute power for 14 years.

High turnout and gathering tensions marked the highly contested parliamentary election that was a showdown between Vucic and his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party and university students who, accusing the Government of corruption and dismantling democracy, had built a popular following across the country. Serbia’s 6.4 million voters were electing lawmakers to the 250-member Parliament.

In conceding the election, Vucic said his party projects that his opponents, the youth-backed Students’ List, will take between 135 and 140 seats while his SNS party will have around 105.  Supporters of the Students’ List immediately flooded onto the streets of Belgrade and other cities, honking horns, shouting and chanting: “Aleksandar is gone,” referring to Vucic. 

The outcome, which Vucic announced only around an hour and a half after polls closed, came after tensions had built as voting progressed during the day. Police in anti-riot gear cordoned off an area in central Belgrade around the election commission headquarters.