Who are the students set to govern Serbia?

Amorphous Student List movement has yet to nominate a prime minister candidate after Aleksandar Vučić's election defeat

Serbia's Student List swept to power without a clear leader, party structure or fully formed programme. Now the protest movement that ousted Russia-friendly, Maga-linked strongman Aleksandar Vučić must work out how to govern.

Based on collective decision-making and comprising people with no political experience, including university professors, opera singers and former sportspeople, the movement formed two years ago must now quickly form a government and prove it can rid the Balkan nation of entrenched corruption and mismanagement.

"The institutional heart will be the list of 250 candidates, most of whom will be MPs, plus the movement itself, which will guide them. They won this way. Now they need to figure out how to govern," said Aleksandar Rankovic, a Paris-based teacher and activist who helped the movement during the election campaign.

"They have really taken the collective approach seriously," he said, adding that the movement "will have to invent a mechanism for how to do that".

The challenges ahead were apparent on election night, when Student List struggled to decide who should deliver its victory speech. Radomir Saičić, a chemistry professor and one of its leading figures, eventually declared: "This is the victory of the conviction that Serbia can and will do better."

According to a projection by independent polling groups CeSID and Ipsos, 140 people on the list have won seats, including ex-basketball star Dejan Bodiroga, actor Tihomir Stanić, opera singer Nikola Mikić and former National Bank of Serbia governor Dejan Šoškić.

Topping the list is a cardiologist from Novi Sad, Ilija Srdanović, who joined the protest movement in 2024 after the collapse of a renovated railway station canopy killed 16 people. Allegations of corruption and lax oversight in the awarding of public contracts turned the disaster into a symbol of Vučić's 14-year rule.

"As parents of four . . . when we first heard what had happened, we desperately tried to account for our family members," Srdanović told the FT before the vote. "The sense of horror turned into anger, then demands for consequences."

The movement must also decide whether to evolve into a conventional party or retain the democratic assemblies known as plenums that have guided its decisions so far.

Abroad, the Student List must navigate Serbia's traditional ties to Russia, strained relations with Brussels over its stalled EU membership bid and refusal to sanction Moscow over Ukraine, while preserving ties with the Trump administration, which enjoyed close relations with Vučić.

An abandoned Trump hotel project in Belgrade could become an early test for Serbia's new government.

The redevelopment, backed by Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, helped galvanise anti-Vučić protests last year after the government approved plans to turn the former General Staff headquarters into a hotel and commercial complex. Bombed by Nato in 1999, the ruined building had become a protected landmark and symbol of the war.

An internal investigation subsequently found that documents used to strip the site of its protected status had been forged, implicating a government minister and raising fresh corruption allegations against the Vučić administration.

A court hearing on November 4 is expected to disclose the evidence behind indictments of officials and others involved. Vučić himself could face criminal proceedings if evidence emerges that he personally broke the law, according to people familiar with the case.

"There are indications that Vučić was also involved in the General Staff case," said Miljan Salata, an architect who opposed the Trump Hotel plan and who later joined the Student List. To him, the case shows why the movement chose the slogan "Serbia or Mafia".

To Salata, the building "symbolises Yugoslav and anti-fascist struggle. Also the end of Yugoslavia and the ensuing crisis, the Nato bombing. The nearly 30 years of not being rebuilt afterwards is another symbol -- and now it is a symbol of reparation, of a struggle to reconstruct the state."

Vučić pardoned dozens of individuals on his last day as president in September without disclosing their identities -- potentially including key figures in the General Staff case.

"The old establishment will not willingly relinquish its grip on institutions, the security apparatus or their media," said Belgrade university political scientist Branislav Radeljić. "Nor should anyone expect it to dismantle the criminal networks from which some of its key figures have long profited, amassing enormous personal fortunes."