BELGRADE — Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic resigned Sunday and announced plans to run for prime minister in an Oct. 25 snap election after nearly two years of student-led protests that had called for an early vote.
Vucic announced his resignation at the presidential palace in Belgrade, where supporters gathered outside and chanted his name.
“I am resigning as president,” Vucic said. “Tomorrow morning I will hand over my duties to the parliament speaker.”
The snap election had become a central demand of a student-led movement that emerged after a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in November 2024, killing 16 people. Protesters blamed corruption for the tragedy and called for accountability.
The incident sparked some of Serbia’s largest protests since the fall of Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, with demonstrations at times drawing hundreds of thousands of people.
The protests initially called for a transparent investigation before expanding into demands for snap elections. Vucic had repeatedly promised an early vote without setting a date until earlier this month, when he scheduled the election for Oct. 25 and cited “major turbulence on the domestic political scene.”
Vucic first won the presidency in 2017 and secured a second term in May 2022. He cut short his five-year term to campaign for prime minister, although Serbian law did not require him to resign from the presidency to seek the position.
“I want to compete as an ordinary man, as one of the people,” Vucic said.
Vucic now heads the electoral list of his Serbian Progressive Party, a right-wing populist party, and serves as its candidate for prime minister.
Minutes before announcing his resignation, Vucic used his constitutional powers to pardon dozens of people, including students and members of his party who faced accusations over offenses linked to the protests.
“I have decided to pardon 49 people, 23 of them in connection with the terrible events we have gone through over the past year and a half,” Vucic said.
Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic will serve as acting president for up to three months under Serbian law. Authorities must call a presidential election during that period.