Serbia's young liberals on the elections they did not contest

On the night of 25 October, PSG watched the election results come in and, after some years, without our party's name anywhere on the screen. The Student List, by the preliminary results, won 52.54% of the national vote and carried all 17 of Belgrade's municipalities. For the first time in more than a decade, Aleksandar Vučić's party will not form the government.

We, the members of PSG, were not candidates. This was our firm decision, and that is the part of this story we most want our sister organisations to understand.

Two years in the street

The protests began after the canopy of the Novi Sad railway station collapsed on 1 November 2024 and killed sixteen people. Students blocked their faculties and asked for something that everybody would think is simple: that institutions do their jobs. The movement grew from there, into marches across the country and some of the largest gatherings Serbia has seen.

PSG Mladi went out to the streets. Our members took part in marches, protested actively and, in the end, helped much during the election process.

In those two years, one thing that became clear to us was - citizens trust the students. They did not trust parties, including ours. We could argue that this was unfair. Or we could accept it and ask what it meant for the election everyone knew was coming.

Why we did not run

Our first choice was unity. PSG said publicly that it would run only if every opposition party around the Platform for a European Serbia, which PSG co-founded in June, and Narodna Srbija ran on a single list. That list never happened. On 8 September, PSG decided not to run at all and to back the Student List instead.

The arithmetic was not complicated. Several small opposition lists, each fighting the threshold, would have split the vote that the students were gathering. Every list that fell short would have handed seats back to the ruling party. In a country where elections are already tilted by media control and pressure on voters, we could not afford to waste a single vote on our own visibility.

The result shows what was at stake. Apart from minority lists, only two lists entered parliament: the Student List and Vučić's. The opposition parties that ran on their own did not clear the bar.

Support, not a blank cheque

We are liberals, and we did not give up our principles to stand aside. Our Main Board's decision made support conditional on the list not contradicting PSG's core values. Our president, Pavle Grbović, put it plainly: no one gets unconditional support. The line we drew was Europe. A movement that glorified war criminals or told Serbians they have no place in the EU would not have had our backing.

That condition still stands.

What it cost

Standing aside is not free for a party. We gave up seats in parliament and the funding that comes with them. After all, we gave up the chance to measure our own support.

For our members, the cost of speaking openly against Vučić was personal. Our members lost their jobs, suffered pressure from employers and family, and were brutally harassed online. Anna Öreg, a PSG member of parliament and the party's vice-president, was under secret surveillance, on an order from Belgrade's Higher Court dated February 2025. Through her and because BIA bugged our office in Novi Sad, a meeting of PSG members and Novi Sad activists was recorded before the great protest of 15 March. Several of those activists were later accused of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order, held in detention for months, and some were pushed into exile. The recording of the meeting was aired on pro-regime media first. An elected MP was spied on for doing politics, and that is the climate in which our members chose to keep going.

And there was a harder cost: explaining to young people who joined a party to stand for something why the best thing it could do was not to stand. Some members disagreed. We think the decision was right, but we do not pretend it was easy. It was democratic.

What we ask of you

A new government has to be formed, and the old system has not disappeared. The ruling party still holds most local and provincial governments, which analysts say have lost their legitimacy after Sunday. The next months will decide whether this becomes a real transition.

So here is what we ask of LYMEC and its member organisations:

• Watch the transition as closely as you watched the protests. Attention fades after election night. That is exactly when it matters most.
• Talk to your mother parties. Ask your MEPs and ministers to judge Serbia on the rule of law and media freedom, not on how stable it looks from Brussels.
• Come and see. Send observers to the local elections that will follow. Visit our members. Visit PSG. Invite the students to your events and listen to them.

A last word

For two years, LYMEC and its member organisations observed Serbia and sent solidarity when we asked for it. Thank you. What we learned is that sometimes a party serves its values best by stepping back so that something larger can move forward. We hope liberals elsewhere never face that choice. If you somehow do, we will be glad to tell you what it felt like. We know Hungarian liberals can understand.

Contributor bio

Jelena Stanković is the Head of the Youth media team at PSG Mladi, the youth organisation of the Free Citizens Movement (PSG), a LYMEC member. She is a creative producer, classical pianist and communications student, based in Belgrade.

Photo: Christoph Andreas Jantezko

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