EditAnalysis: Euphoria and backlash as Serbia’s Student Ticket goes public
After 16 months of secrecy, all 250 names are out. Missing rebel stars, social-media smears and a program that avoids “high politics” now frame the campaign against Vučić
After 16 months of speculation about who would stand on the Student Ticket, the public finally has all 250 names. Some of the most prominent figures expected to appear are not on the list. How far that will hurt the ticket at the ballot box is still hard to judge. The campaign launch and the submission of the list to the Republic Electoral Commission produced real euphoria among supporters of the rebel university students – and sharp criticism of particular candidates on social media.
Campaign kick-off
After 22 months of rebellion, 492 days of waiting for President Aleksandar Vučić to call a general election, thousands of kilometres of organising and the largest protest rallies in Serbian history, the student movement on 14 September handed the Republic Electoral Commission 70,000 signatures of support for the Student Ticket – Students Win citizens’ group. The submission was staged as a celebration: nearly 9,000 people formed a column in the street. Citizens had already queued for hours – more than five hours in some places – to sign.
A few days earlier the movement, Vučić’s main opponent, opened its campaign in style with a rally of several thousand people in Novi Sad. The blockading students, as they still call themselves, held that mass meeting on 10 September, the first day of the official campaign, beating other actors to the punch – above all the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. They chose Novi Sad for its symbolism: the “wounded city” where the rebellion began after the collapse of the railway station’s concrete canopy, which killed 16 people and left one person severely injured. The rally was also an answer to a Progressive gathering first announced for 4 September, which Vučić postponed after Novi Sad residents made clear he was not welcome.
In the first days of the campaign the movement published an 11-point programme it said should lead to the country’s recovery. The core promise is a decisive break with the theft of public money, the return of stolen funds to the budget, and investment in education and the economy.
The students also pledged to free the courts and prosecutors’ offices and create a special prosecutorial police; pass laws on the origin of illegally acquired assets, confiscation and the lustration of public officials; make public procurement fully transparent and audit state projects; free the media; hire on merit and end ruling-party influence in the public sector; bring innovation into teaching and provide free textbooks; support domestic entrepreneurs and farmers; cut the maximum length of fixed-term contracts from 24 months to 12; break the monopoly of the importers’ lobby and secure food supply; make housing accessible for young couples and workers in shortage professions; put medicine prices under state control and cut them sharply; and rebuild outpatient clinics and health centres in rural areas.
There is almost no “high politics” in the programme: no foreign-policy line, no Kosovo dossier, no verdict on the 1990s. The ticket has focused on everyday problems. That choice is deliberate. By avoiding the issues that split Serbian society – above all the country’s international orientation and the wars of the 1990s – the students hope to reach the widest possible electorate.
Names on the ticket
Few household names appear. Among those who are well known are basketball legend Dejan Bodiroga, actor Tihomir Stanić, former National Bank of Serbia governor Dejan Šoškić, farmer Zlatko Kokanović of the We Won’t Give Jadar Up association, engineer Zoran Đajić, university professors Jovo Bakić, Zoran Stojiljković, Aleksandar Baucal and Oliver Tošković, academician Radomir Saičić, University of Arts in Belgrade rector Mirjana Nikolić, playwright Željko Hubac, athlete Mihail Dudaš, former footballer Mirko Poledica and musician Feđa Dimović. First on the list is Ilija Srđanović, a tenured professor at the Novi Sad Faculty of Medicine who also works at the Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases of Vojvodina in Sremska Kamenica.
Most of the ticket is made up of professors, doctors, artists, activists and entrepreneurs. What links them is professional standing. They come from different generations and from every part of Serbia, large cities and small towns alike. The students insist that party leaders did not pick the candidates and that the list was not drawn up “behind closed doors,” but through the direct-democracy methods built during more than a year of blockades, plenums, conversations and joint work. They stress that no single name is meant to outshine the others: they do not want a new leader or a cult of personality.
As soon as the list was published, coordinated “bot” accounts began smearing individual candidates. Attacks have come from several sides of the spectrum, aimed at peeling off voters of different beliefs. Critics claim that list leader Srđanović “went through all the war arenas, from Krajina to Kosovo, with a rifle in his hands in the 1990s.” Third-placed Željko Hubac is attacked for working as a regular contributor to Helsinška povelja (Helsinki Charter), a publication of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, in 1999 and 2000. Footage has circulated of academician Slobodan Vukosavić, number 15, accusing Germany of a continuous policy against Serbia and the Serbs. The students are also criticised for placing Danijela Stošić Panić, a tenured professor at the Niš Faculty of Economics, at number 33 – her father, Hadži Milorad Stošić, has been a Progressive Party MP for 14 years. Another target is Feđa Dimović of the hip-hop group Beogradski sindikat, long associated in public debate with parts of the “deep state.”
Absence of Đokić and Lompar
The biggest surprise is the absence of University of Belgrade rector Vladan Đokić and Faculty of Philology professor Milo Lompar. For two years both men – symbols, respectively, of the pro-European and nationalist-leaning opposition to the regime – were closely identified with the student movement, which they backed loudly, and were widely expected to stand near the top of the ticket. Unofficial reports say both were dropped in a tight vote. Other public figures once rumoured to be on the list were also removed, including retired prosecutor Jasmina Paunović, physician Rade Panić and attorney Vladimir Beljanski.
Why Lompar was taken off is unclear; several theories circulate. One is that his right-wing views, especially on the “Serb world” and the wars of the 1990s, provoked fierce resistance among the civic public. Another is that he met opposition party leaders and pressed the movement to cooperate with them. A third credits Bosniak students from Novi Pazar. A fourth points to unnamed power centres. A fifth is simply that the students wanted no one on the list with a sharp, public ideological profile. Đokić’s removal is widely read as the counterpart to Lompar’s: a way to stop the ticket looking predominantly civic and pro-European.
Many right-wing opponents of the regime are bitter about Lompar’s exclusion and complain that the students have no prominent nationalist intellectual on the list – though academician Radomir Saičić could be placed in that camp. He stands 91st and is little known to the wider public. Civic Serbia also lacks star names on the ticket. The right’s argument is that elections in Serbia cannot be won without nationalist forces. That does not mean those voters will desert the Student Ticket in droves, but some public figures on the right have already withdrawn support and backed the Authentic Right list led by New Democratic Party of Serbia president Miloš Jovanović.
By dropping both Lompar and Đokić, the students stuck to the rule that no one should outshine the rest. They also avoided a public clash of worldviews that could have split the movement or turned into a leadership contest. The lack of a strong political figure on the list cuts both ways: some voters may stay home, but the ticket can still try to draw support from every side of the spectrum.
Support and attacks
A number of organisations that have chosen not to run have endorsed the Student Ticket, including the Democratic Party, the Green-Left Front and the Movement of Free Citizens. Among extra-parliamentary groups, backing has come from Savo Manojlović’s Kreni-promeni movement, Boris Tadić’s Social Democratic Party, Dr Dragan Milić’s Movement for the Decentralisation of Serbia, Saša Radulović’s Enough Is Enough, Dveri, the Serbian Renewal Movement, the League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina, the Democratic Community of Vojvodina Hungarians, the ProGlas initiative, the movements led by Nemanja Šarović and Miša Bačulov, and many local associations.
This week produced the campaign’s first major twist: the People’s Serbia coalition, led by Miroslav Aleksić, withdrew and endorsed the Student Ticket. Whether that was a cold electoral calculation or the product of outside pressure is still unclear. Aleksić was in effect presented with a fait accompli after coalition partners Miloš Parandilović and Aleksandar “Čuta” Jovanović unilaterally backed the students. Aleksić spoke of contributing to a “referendum atmosphere”; it is more likely he doubted the coalition would clear the threshold.
The authorities, meanwhile, are trying to weaken the ticket on several fronts. Pro-government media and regime-aligned accounts smear candidates from every political direction and circulate unverified claims that former Democratic Party leader Bojan Pajtić and one-time senior official Dušan Petrović stand behind the list. The regime has also registered lookalike citizens’ groups – phantom lists designed to siphon votes through confusion. The opening of the campaign has been used to revive the “sonic cannon” story and turn it against the opposition.
The original of this article by EUalive’s partner BETA can be found here.
Caption: Students carry a banner reading ‘Students win’ during a march in support of the ‘Student List – Students Win’, in Belgrade, Serbia, 14 September 2026. ‘Student List – Students Win’ is an independent citizens’ group emerging from the student-led anti-corruption blockade movement, aiming to challenge the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in Serbia’s snap parliamentary election on 25 October 2026. EPA/ANDREJ CUKIC
Updated: September 17, 2026 - 11:04
