Serbian student movement eyes power after election triumph

Serbia's new leaders are set for a series of challenges in the wake of a memorable election victory. The student list has succeeded in displacing Serbia's long-standing president, Aleksandar Vučić. This comes in the wake of two years of protest against allegations of corruption in what is an EU membership candidate country. The fatal collapse of a canopy at a transport hub in Belgrade was the catalyst for the movement that saw Vučić defeated legitimately at the ballot box on Sunday. he has conceded defeat a little earlier after 14 years as the key voice in his country's affairs Caroline Baum with this supporters of Serbia's student movement revel in their landslide win in Sunday's parliamentary elections as they clean up Pionierski Park in the heart of Belgrade the park was occupied for months leading up to the vote by supporters of former populist president Aleksandar Vučić It was abandoned Sunday after his crushing loss was announced. As they remove the last traces of the right-wing camp, supporters of the student list party are relieved. Today there's finally freedom. You can feel it everywhere in Belgrade. At last there's peace and you can walk around and at last stay in Serbia. Voters' expectations were at an all-time high after two years of widespread anti-government protests. On Sunday, 70% of Serbians took to the polls. It was the highest turnout in more than 30 years. Many say they're still overwhelmed with emotion after Sunday's celebrations. I've been so happy since last night, after an emotional rollercoaster of sadness, happiness and uncertainty that ultimately resulted in joy. Now I'm heading to work. When I see people and still hear car sirens, my heart flutters. with the clear parliamentary majority the new government is expected to carry out broad policy changes including improving public services and the introduction of harsher anti-corruption measures the new faces in parliament will need to overcome deeply ingrained bureaucratic resistance to these reforms while most of the student list candidates are experts in their fields they generally have little political experience the movement has also kept quiet on foreign policy issues during the campaign. Historically close to Russia and heavily dependent on its gas, Belgrade is likely to continue walking a tightrope between Moscow and Brussels. Let's get the analysis and bring in Aleksandar Markovic, researcher and political activist for the Green Left Front in Serbia, joining us live from Barcelona. Thanks for being with us. Great to have you on board. Interested to find out what your perspective on the situation is. How did this happen then? The student protests began first, then the political list is formed, and now power. Okay, first of all, a minor correction. I'm no longer with the Green Left Front in Serbia. I actually left the party basically two years ago, specifically because the students offered a better alternative. So one of the key reasons why the students mobilized was that traditional political parties have failed to deliver on the promises. For example, on lithium mining and basically the public services, which were held in the hands of the government, could only have been held in the hands of the government insofar as there was no political opposition. And in this empty space, the student movement coalesced basically to attempt to solve the various issues of the country, including reliance on foreign capital, degraded and destroyed health care and education systems, including the fact that we even had a mass school shooting two years ago, precisely in one of the Belgrade schools. All of this meant that the country was experiencing several difficult crises, basically at the same time. And the only way that one could enable any sort of solution was to create a collective player which was not dependent on corruption, and cannot be blackmailed at the hand of the corporations or the government. And precisely because traditional political parties did not offer such an alternative, the students began to organize and to seek new methods of organizations, which we basically saw being victorious several days ago. Okay, so it's all been decided legitimately, fairly, democratically at the ballot box, which is obviously a major plus in terms of what Serbia is looking to do, i.e. get into the EU at some point. In terms of the things that you've listed, Alexander, some of them are very serious and they're all difficult things to change. So do you think this new movement, newly elected, will be able to change things, really? I think it's a big issue that nobody can predict because the decentralized and leaderless movement was really powerful once it mobilized the masses. But can this leaderless and democratic movement transition to a government while keeping the same methods that made it strong in the first place? We cannot predict, and one of the difficulties in doing so is that the parliamentary system itself demands from you a kind of leadership position. For example, the students have not candidated a premier, and they will have to also candidate a president once the presidential election is set in. They did not do so on principle because they wanted to oppose the leadership positions, which would have been easy to attack by the hands of the government. Had they instituted a premier already, Vučić would have probably attacked him in the meantime. But I think that the inside mechanisms of the movement, which have not been discussed by Western media so far, are very interesting. So I was one of the people who were lecturing on blockaded faculties on several occasions. And I think that the students spent two years actually discussing Serbia's internal and external problems. So there were issues like lithium mining, like, for example, how to switch foreign direct investments and subsidies that they received into domestic investments, how to make, how to use domestic investments to stabilize the healthcare and educational sector, how to raise the GDP amount that will be going to healthcare and education. So problems like this have been discussed not only by the students, which are mostly 20 to 24 or 25 years old, but they've also been discussed along with researchers and professors. So they created a 1000 page document, which is not public yet, but the outcome of this document is publicly available as the so-called student program and i think that this was one of the definitely most serious programs that i have seen because it starts from the premise that the current economic configuration of society has basically reached its limits and this will be told to Europe by any economist so the way and the idea of what to do i would say is pretty clear but whether we have the force to do it is not and i think that by doing this electoral victory and by showing that more than 50 percent of the population stands behind something that could generate a program like this definitely means that there is a will and there is a way to make changes in Serbia what i think is the major obstacle when it comes to producing change in Serbia is actually the external um um environment in which Serbia operates so there's been falling uh foreign direct investment basically as Europe continues to um basically switch from a welfare kind of state or the remnants of the welfare state into a highly militarized society basically which is almost well not to say preparing for war but you can see that ever since Trump has pressured the European leaders to raise 5% GDP to NATO and to the militaries. A lot of public services like healthcare and education have suffered cuts in the European Union, and as a consequence of using savings for militarization, basically there has been a falling level of FDI investment into Serbia and the Balkans in general, which means that not only Serbia, but Eastern Europe as a whole will face multiple crises, and that will probably lower the fiscal space for any government, and I think that this might not be completely the fault of any future government in Serbia, but things will be difficult for various reasons. The only thing that gives me personal hope is that I know that the collective leadership is capable of doing this. Alexander, I'm sorry. I need to cut you off there because we're running out of time. Sorry, sir. Thank you very much indeed. It's fascinating what you're saying, and I think we should do a documentary on the changes that have happened there because it is massive what is going on there. No, seriously, you're giving us a real sense of this historical moment for your country. And I think it's absolutely fascinating what you're saying. But sadly, in this format, we're out of time. Thank you, sir, very much indeed. Alexander Matovic on the situation in Serbia. Thank you, sir, very much.