The Student List, formed from Serbia’s mass student protests, has won the parliamentary election and promises a radical break with corruption and the political establishment. As in Nepal in 2025, a mass anti-corruption movement has brought a new capitalist group to power.
Details. The Student List (SL) won 140 of the 250 seats in the parliamentary election, defeating the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has been in power for the past 14 years.
► The SL is an opposition electoral list that emerged from Serbia’s student protests. It's a big-tent electoral movement, without a single person as its leader. The movement blames Serbia’s problems on “rotten institutions” and calls for the firing of many senior officials. Their win has been welcomed by EU representatives, while their campaign avoided talking about EU accession, seeing it as a polarizing issue.
► The electoral list presented by the SL actually contained no students, but is filled with professors, actors, doctors, farmers and scientists. The party presents itself as the expert and anti-corruption alternative, promising stronger liberal institutions and a government run by “professionals”. Furthermore, the Student List supports the chauvinistic memorandum on Kosovo, arguing that Kosovo is an inseparable part of Serbia and calls for every Serb to defend the spiritual and cultural heritage.
Context. Student protests in Serbia began after students and professors were attacked while trying to honor the victims of the Novi Sad canopy collapse. Protests spread across Serbia, but only made bourgeois-democratic demands, at best wishing to replace one capitalist faction with another. The Serbian government was not able to disperse the protests peacefully nor violently, leading to President Vučić resigning and calling for early elections.
► The crisis of the international communist movement has left many countries without strong communist parties capable of leading the working class. In their absence, mass discontent is channelled into bourgeois electoralism and adventurist actions rather than an organised struggle for socialism.
► A similar outcome followed the 2025 Gen Z uprising in Nepal, which toppled the CPN (UML) government. The protests were initially triggered by a ban on major social media platforms, but very quickly expanded due to public anger over the dire economic conditions and security forces killing protestors. The uprising's energy was captured by the new liberal "anti-corruption" RSP, which won the subsequent elections. This bourgeois party has aimed to make Nepal more attractive for investors, whilst consumer inflation in the country continues to rise, hitting 6.3% in October of 2026.