Protesting Students Demand Snap Parliamentary Election 

Students in Indjija, Jan.31 2025 (Photo: Nikola Sablić)

Striking university students, who represent their fellow students across Serbia, have demanded an early parliamentary election, stressing they will not be running.  

In a post published on social media Instagram in the evening on May 5, students said their demands had not been fulfilled and that corruption had become deeply embedded in state institutions, and were therefore demanding disbanding of the Serbian parliament and scheduling an early parliamentary election. 

The students is a group enjoying great trust of the people and is why they have decided to stage this demand, according to the post. They also called on the citizens to vote for the student-backed ticket in the potential election. “We believe that democracy is the only right way to solve the ongoing political crisis of this magnitude, and therefore we call on the people to vote for the ticket which the protesting students of all higher education institutions in Serbia will support, for to ensure that the truth will prevail on the scales of justice", it is said in the post.  

Speaking on behalf of the protesting students on May 6, Sofija Peric, a student of the Faculty of Political Sciences, said that students would not be running in the snap parliamentary election they had demanded, but would rather “back the people they consider credible, who have demonstrated their expertise in their respective fields of work, and who they believe will represent the voice of the people properly.” 

Peric told TV Nova that the identities of those people would remain undisclosed for the time being. “No deadline has been set, but a snap election should be scheduled as soon as possible. Unless the government is ready to call an early election in the next few days, it will reveal that it has doubts about its legitimacy, which it may have lost as well,” Peric said. 

Students have been blocking state universities for months now, demanding that the authorities be held responsible for a tragedy at the Novi Sad Railway Station, which claimed the lives of 16 people. 

Student demands have been backed by a large number of citizens, who have been protesting for months, as well as university professors, education workers, farmers, lawyers, and actors. Protest rallies have become a symbol of citizens’ wider dissatisfaction with the rule of law in Serbia, also raising the question whether the Novi Sad tragedy was caused by negligence and corruption.