On 6 September 2026, Serbia's student movement held the final vote on who could stand on its list for the parliamentary election. Its most prominent casualty was Vladan Đokić, rector of the University of Belgrade. He had backed the students since the protests began, and many expected him to lead the list. Of the 85 student assemblies taking part, 43 voted to remove him. Removal required a simple majority of the plenums present. The rule had been proposed by the assembly at the Faculty of Sciences in the city of Novi Sad, which then argued that Đokić should have stayed.

A movement without leaders

The student movement was born on 1 November 2024, when a concrete canopy at Novi Sad's railway station collapsed, killing 16 people. Many Serbians blamed corruption in public construction under Aleksandar Vučić, who has dominated Serbian politics for over a decade. Students led the protests that followed and blockaded their faculties. They ran everything through plenums: open assemblies that decide by direct vote, with no leaders or spokespeople. On 27 September 2026, Vučić resigned as president, reportedly to return as prime minister after a snap parliamentary election on 25 October. The students are fielding their own list, campaigning on an 11-point programme led by the rule of law, anti-corruption and media freedom.

Yet no student is a candidate. The vote on the rector was the last step in a process set out in April 2025, in a rulebook called the Directive. The rulebook is strict about who may run in the movement's name but far looser about what binds those candidates once elected. Can a leaderless movement carry its authority into parliament without becoming the kind of party it set out to replace?

Deciding to run

Running for parliament cut against the movement's leaderless structure, and a vocal minority opposed the idea outright. Those who favoured running organised first: in April 2025, influential students from several plenums formed an informal coalition and drafted the rules in small, trusted circles. With no Serbia-wide voting system yet, each university city decided separately. In Belgrade, the plenums voted 29 to 5 to demand snap elections, but only 23 to 9 to run their own list.

The strict rules were a promise: to those who had opposed running, that it would not turn the movement into a party; to voters, that the list was no party in disguise

Supporters had the votes, but they needed the losing side to stay. The strict rules were a promise: to those who had opposed running, that it would not turn the movement into a party; to voters, that the list was no party in disguise.

Strict at the door

No student may run: anyone enrolled in 2024/25, or with studies on hold, is excluded. The drafters wanted no suggestion that students were building political careers. Former members of the ruling coalition's 20 parties are barred, and so are former officials of parliamentary opposition parties. That leaves doctors, academics, artists, former athletes and activists. Ordinary members of opposition parties were not barred, but almost none with a party past. The list is led by Ilija Srdanović, a cardiologist and professor in Novi Sad.

Serbia elects all 250 MPs in a single nationwide constituency from closed lists, and seats go in list order. The movement therefore needed one national list. Each university city’s share was set by student numbers, spreading its places evenly down the list.

The rules bind because everyone treats them as binding

Then came the veto. In August 2026, plenums challenged 99 of over 300 potential candidates; in September, 38 candidates and substitutes (reserves who fill a vetoed place) were removed. None of this has legal force, and any of them could have refused to step aside. None did, the rector included. The rules bind because everyone treats them as binding.

What binds an MP

Past the door, proposals for formal control came and went. In June 2025, the plenums agreed in principle to limit their MPs' mandates to 16 to 18 months – long enough to reform institutions, short enough to keep any government transitional. The limit was then struck out altogether in a vote so close that a row over late ballots became what the plenums called a ‘constitutional crisis of the blockades’. It was settled only in September 2025.

The candidate pledge is just as modest. Candidates accept only 'moral and political' responsibility, with no enforcement mechanism. Even that was contested: in April 2025, Belgrade's plenums approved it by only 23 to 11.

This reflects legal realism, not a loss of nerve. Serbian parties once made representatives sign undated resignation letters, so they could remove them at will. The Constitutional Court struck down these blank resignations for local councillors in 2010, and since 2011 MPs too must resign in person. The mandate belongs to the MP, not the list. What remains is the informal control that removed the rector.

The student movement: after the vote

Otpor, the leaderless student movement that helped topple Slobodan Milošević in 2000, became a conventional party. It won just 1.7% in 2003 and merged into the Democratic Party a year later. The Student List has taken a different route: its candidates were chosen by the plenums, not by party leaders. But before an election, the plenums can take a name off the list. After it, they cannot take back a seat.

Before an election, the plenums can take a name off the list. After it, they cannot take back a seat

The drafters are right that formal sanctions were never enforceable, and informal ones may be enough. Voters back the list because students made it. An MP who breaks with the plenums would have little following of their own. Yet that holds only while the movement remains more popular than any of its candidates. A presidential election is due by 27 December, and the plenums have adopted a procedure to choose a candidate. The Directive was written so that no one would rise above the plenums. The presidency requires someone who does.

The post From plenums to parliament: the rulebook behind Serbia's Student List appeared first on The Loop.