Serbia’s Students Topple Vučić Two Years After Novi Sad Disaster
Tens of thousands of people filled the rain-soaked streets of Novi Sad on Sunday and stood silent for 16 minutes—one minute for each person killed when the railway station’s concrete canopy collapsed two years ago. This time, the commemoration carried a new fact: the student movement born from that disaster had defeated Aleksandar Vučić’s political machine one week earlier.
Preliminary results gave the Student List 141 seats in Serbia’s 250-member parliament. Vučić conceded defeat and left office after more than a decade in which his Serbian Progressive Party tightened its grip on the state, police, media and public contracts. Final results are still due, but officials do not expect them to change the outcome.
The movement did not begin as an electoral project. It began at 11:52 a.m. on November 1, 2024, when the renovated station canopy fell without warning. Fourteen people died at the scene and two later died from their injuries. Students responded with daily traffic blockades at the exact time of the collapse and a demand that the state open the reconstruction files and punish those responsible.
Grief became organization
For two years, the students turned mourning into political discipline. University occupations spread. Farmers, teachers, professionals, actors and workers joined the marches. Student assemblies chose candidates instead of handing control to Serbia’s discredited opposition parties. Their method connected one visible catastrophe to a wider system of patronage, secrecy and impunity.
The government tried to outlast the movement. It published only part of the station documentation, arrested demonstrators and watched pro-government activists attack students. Yet each confrontation widened the coalition. Protests forced the construction minister’s resignation, a cabinet reshuffle and eventually the snap election that ended Vučić’s rule.
That sequence matters beyond Serbia. Demonstrations can expose a regime’s weakness, but anger alone rarely transfers power. The students built durable local networks, kept their central demand clear and created an electoral instrument without dissolving into the old party order. They turned a recurring memorial action into a national argument about who owns the state.
Victory is not justice
The election removed the government that protesters blamed for protecting the system behind the disaster. It did not resolve the case. Prosecutors indicted 13 people, including a former construction minister, but pretrial proceedings stalled and no trial began. The defendants deny wrongdoing.
At Sunday’s memorial, the students placed 16 wreaths and 16 red hearts outside the station. The names included children. One student speaker rejected the language of accident: “It was a murder and a murder demands accountability and justice.” The accusation captures why an electoral victory cannot close the movement’s work.
The incoming majority now faces the test that breaks many movements once they enter office. It must protect evidence, reopen shelved investigations, restore professional independence in the police and judiciary, and publish public contracts without using accountability as a cover for partisan revenge. It must also resist the temptation to inherit the machinery it promised to dismantle.
State television broadcast this year’s anniversary after senior resignations at the public broadcaster—a small but telling reversal from the silence and selective coverage that marked the Vučić years. Institutions can change quickly when political protection disappears. They can also be captured again if new rulers treat them as spoils.
Student supporter Zorana Sijan Oborina said she hoped for “a collective healing”. Serbia will not reach it through symbolism alone. Healing requires trials that establish responsibility, records that reveal how the project was managed and institutions strong enough to stop another deadly shortcut.
The 16 minutes of silence in Novi Sad did not mark the end of a revolt. They marked the point at which a victorious movement must prove that power can serve the people who forced it to change hands.
Sources: Reuters; Associated Press; and Al Jazeera.
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