Add StudioX as a preferred source on GoogleA student movement less than two years old has won Serbia’s parliamentary election by a landslide, ending the long rule of President Aleksandar Vučić. According to BBC World, the result closely mirrors Hungary’s April vote, in which Viktor Orbán was defeated by Péter Magyar’s Tisza party.
Two long-serving leaders, two similar defeats
Orbán had been in office for 16 years and Vučić for 14. BBC reporter Nick Thorpe writes that both looked invincible, having taken over state institutions and built business interests overlapping the two countries.
The two met in northern Serbia almost a year ago, sharing burek pastries in Subotica before visiting a winery to discuss business, including a planned Hungarian purchase of Serbia’s Nis oil refinery. They also shared friendly ties with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, and backed Milorad Dodik, the separatist Bosnian Serb leader.
The parallels in their exits are striking, the BBC says. Vučić conceded at 21:30 on election night, the same time Orbán did on 12 April. Few observers had expected either man to concede peacefully. The Student List will hold 140 of 250 seats in Serbia’s parliament, while Tisza won 140 of 199 seats in Hungary. Turnout was 79% in Hungary and 69% in Serbia.
There has been speculation that Orbán persuaded Vučić not to use force, after the Serbian president spoke to him twice on election night. Vučić denies speaking to Orbán before conceding but acknowledges a later conversation. Orbán declined to comment when contacted by the BBC.
Monitors and AI tools
The two movements differ in style. Tisza is built around its leader, while the Serbian students say they have no leader. But the BBC reports that tech-savvy young people drove turnout in both countries. They used AI tools to analyse figures, identify threats to the vote and organize tens of thousands of election monitors to counter intimidation and fraud by the governing parties.
A Hungarian civic group, DE, sent 70 monitors to Vojvodina in northern Serbia to work with student representatives. It had also run summer workshops sharing methods from the Hungarian vote.
One key technique was to identify “infected” polling districts in advance. These were areas where unusually high support for the governing party in earlier elections suggested voter intimidation or “chain voting”.
Péter Klemm, a student activist from Subotica, told the BBC that from about 16:00 on election day, groups of masked men he described as Vučić supporters gathered near polling stations. Mobile teams were sent in and filmed what happened. With 20 to 30 volunteers at each threatened station, he believes, the presence of monitors deterred intimidation and fraud. The BBC says masked and hooded vigilantes also took up positions in central Belgrade an hour before polls closed, and were photographed at many polling stations, where monitors blocked them.
What comes next
Magyar, now Hungary’s prime minister, was the only European leader to phone the students directly that evening, the BBC reports. He told the broadcaster it was good to hear that Tisza’s story could inspire other nations. Student List head Ilija Srdanović, who spoke with Magyar, had said before the vote that Hungary’s result showed the movement was on the right path.
The BBC notes that Orbán, 63, and Vučić, 56, may now face prosecution for corruption and abuse of power. Serbia’s special organized crime prosecution service, JTOK, and Hungary’s new special prosecutors, known as NVVH, have similar powers and could be useful to each other. Hungarian companies close to Orbán were involved in the Novi Sad railway station project.
The collapse of that station’s canopy on 1 November 2024, which killed 16 people, was blamed on corruption and negligence. It became the catalyst for the Serbian student movement.
Áron Timar, founder of DE, told the BBC that Europe had assumed the two governments grew stronger the longer they stayed in power, when in fact they were growing weaker.
Source: BBC World
Harnaik Singh Rathor is the Founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of StudioX News Canada, Canada's multilingual digital news network serving multilingual diaspora communities across Canada. With a background in media production, public relations, and multicultural communications, he founded StudioX Film and TV Corporation to bridge the gap between mainstream Canadian media and the country's diverse immigrant communities. He is a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), RTDNA Canada, CPRS Vancouver, NEPMCC, and the Canadian Freelance Union (Unifor). Based in Surrey, British Columbia. | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harnaiksinghrathor/ | Muck Rack: https://muckrack.com/harnaiksinghrathor | Email: editor@studioxnews.ca
