May 22 (SeeNews) - Serbia will hold early parliamentary elections between the end of September and the middle of November, president Aleksandar Vucic said.
If a movement backed by protesting students wins the elections, the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) will accept the results, Vucic said in a televised interview with public broadcaster RTS late on Thursday.
Vucic, whose second five-year term ends in May 2027, has been facing pressure to call early parliamentary elections after a fatal train station accident in northern city of Novi Sad on November 1, 2024, when a concrete canopy at the station collapsed, killing 16 people. The accident triggered a wave of nationwide student-led protests, seeking accountability for the accident and challenging Vucic's political dominance.
In social media posts on Thursday, the students called on citizens to join them on May 23 in their first big rally this year, which will be held at Belgrade's Slavija square, where a huge anti-government protest took place in March last year.
The students, who first called for snap elections in May 2025, have said they will announce the list they plan to support once elections are officially called. They also said that the list will not include people who have previously held government positions and that the movement intends to run independently, without the opposition parties.
Meanwhile, some parliamentary opposition parties, including the Democratic Party (DS), said that they will not run in the snap elections but will support the student movement instead, unlike others, such as the Party of Freedom and Justice (SSP), which will take part in the elections.
Serbia's current cabinet, led by endocrinologist Djuro Macut, was voted in by parliament in April last year, after Milos Vucevic, president of SNS, resigned as prime minister amid the protests. The Vucevic-led government was inaugurated in May 2024 following snap elections held in December 2023. SNS holds 129 seats in Serbia's 250-seat assembly and rules in coalition with the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), which has 18 seats.
Parliament speaker Ana Brnabic, who is member of the party's leadership and is a close ally of Vucic, said last month that SNS will discuss nominating Vucic as a candidate for prime minister ahead of the early parliamentary elections. Vucic had already served as prime minister between 2014 and 2017.
SNS has been in power since 2012.
