Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic resigns to run in October parliamentary elections

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced his resignation on Sunday in order to run for prime minister in parliamentary elections scheduled for October, held after nearly two years of student-led protests. “I am resigning from my position as president,” Mr. Vucic declared outside the presidential palace, where his supporters chanted his name. “Tomorrow morning, I will hand over my mandate to the President of the National Assembly,” he added.

The holding of early elections was a key demand of a student movement born after the collapse, in November 2024, of a marquee at Novi Sad station – a tragedy which cost the lives of 16 people and largely attributed to corruption. The tragedy sparked some of the largest protests in Serbia since the fall of Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, sometimes bringing together hundreds of thousands of people. Initial calls for a transparent investigation evolved into a demand for early elections, which Mr Vucic had repeatedly promised but did not set a date for.

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The Serbian nationalist president, citing “significant turbulence on the domestic political scene”, finally announced at the beginning of September that this election, which was initially scheduled to be held in December 2027, would be organized at the end of October.

49 people pardoned

First elected president in 2017 and re-elected in May 2022, Vucic cut his five-year term short to campaign for prime minister, even though the law did not require him to resign. “I want to present myself as an ordinary man, as one of the people,” Mr. Vucic said. He now heads the electoral list of his right-wing populist party, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

Minutes before his resignation, Mr. Vucic used his constitutional powers to pardon dozens of people - including students and his party loyalists - suspected of offenses committed during the protests. “I have decided to pardon 49 people, including 23 in connection with the terrible events we have experienced over the past year and a half,” Mr. Vucic underlined, referring to the demonstrations.

Under the law, Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic now serves as interim president for a maximum of three months, during which time a presidential election must be called.