Serbia and the power of the ballot box

The ousting of Aleksandar Vučić is an inspiration to democrats and a warning to autocrats

Aleksandar Vučić spent most of his 12 years in charge of Serbia, first as prime minister then as president, turning it into an authoritarian democracy where elections are neither free nor fair. It was not enough to stop him from being routed in Sunday's parliamentary vote by a student-led protest movement fronted by academics, doctors, architects and actors. They were projected to win 140 seats in Serbia's 250-member parliament. The extraordinary result proves the value of democratic elections in holding governments to account. It shows the people's will is irrepressible, except in the most autocratic systems.

Vučić's defeat provides Serbia with a once-in-a-generation turning point akin to the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević in 2000, also in a student-led protest movement. Milošević's ousting put the country on a more democratic, western-orientated path, curtailed barely three years later with the assassination of reformist prime minister Zoran Ðinđić.

Although Vučić presented himself as pro-western and pro-EU, he hedged his bets and turned to Moscow and Beijing whenever it suited him. He courted the Trump administration by dangling business deals. Although regarded by western leaders as an indispensable partner in the Western Balkans, his nationalist machinations in Kosovo, Bosnia and elsewhere have thwarted the region's normalisation and stabilisation. Serbia's EU membership bid stalled due to Vučić's democratic backsliding and erosion of the rule of law.

The Student List now has an opportunity to restore democratic checks and balances, re-establish a free and pluralistic media and reverse the capture of state institutions and the economy by Vučić's populist rightwing Serbian Progressive Party. The students have not committed to reinvigorating Belgrade's EU accession bid, have ruled out recognising an independent Kosovo and have rejected adopting EU sanctions against Russia, a traditional ally. But a democratic restoration will by definition bring Serbia closer to the EU. And the bloc will continue to be a powerful economic draw.

All of this assumes the Student List, a leaderless amateur movement that takes decisions through plenums at universities, can appoint a capable prime minister, assemble a competent government and enact a coherent programme. The movement's published policy priorities are sketchy at best. While there are encouraging parallels with the Hungarian opposition's ousting of strongman Viktor Orbán, it had an undisputed leader in Péter Magyar, a government team in waiting and a detailed plan.

Still, the students' remarkable achievement holds lessons for democrats around the world and for autocrats who care to pay attention. Like Magyar's Tisza Party, they connected with voters face to face in towns and villages across the country, building a sense of citizen empowerment. They focused their campaign on corruption, the autocrat's Achilles heel. The movement was born out of demonstrations over a disaster in the city of Novi Sad, where the recently renovated railway station roof collapsed, killing 16 people. Protesters blamed the accident on mismanagement, graft and secrecy. The more the government resisted accounting for its actions, sometimes thuggishly so, the more public anger grew. The election result proves once again that incumbents, even highly entrenched ones, are vulnerable when voters feel they are losing out while a governing circle prospers.

Lastly, at a time of a global democratic recession and popular disengagement from politics, Serbs, like Hungarians before them, have given an awe-inspiring demonstration of the power of the ballot box. They turned up in droves to vote out an unpopular, self-serving leader and show that even in a highly imperfect democracy, the people can still prove to be sovereign.