Serbian President Concedes To Student-Led Party

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat this week after his party trailed a student-backed slate in the race to form the next government. The Student List, organized by protesters who began marching in 2024, outperformed Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party. Vučić has held power in Serbia since 2012.

His defeat followed the ouster of Hungary's Viktor Orbán in elections earlier this year and came the same day Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won his runoff against far-right challenger Flávio Bolsonaro. Lula rallied voters who had not backed him in the first round. Bolsonaro briefly called the result illegitimate before South American leaders recognized it. Bolsonaro, who is under investigation for corruption, money laundering, and tax evasion, landed in Miami on Wednesday. He has not been formally charged and has denied wrongdoing.

The Serbian protests began after a canopy collapsed outside a train station in Novi Sad in 2024, killing people and triggering anger over state corruption and mismanagement. Police at times met demonstrators with heavy force. Vučić used state media to cast the students as foreign agents. The Student List now must decide how to build a government in Belgrade.

In India, Anish Gawande, a national spokesperson for an opposition party, said Lula's win showed coalitions can form against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. Protests led by Gen Z have run for months in New Delhi and other cities over scarce jobs for young people and the removal of more than 130 million people from voter rolls. Gawande posted on Instagram, "If it happened in Brazil, it can happen in India."

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a snap election after his coalition could not pass housing legislation and said, "What has happened in Brazil will happen in Spain." In Albania, the Flamingo movement drew students and professionals to protest a luxury resort project on a coastal preserve backed by Jared Kushner, the American president's son-in-law. Protests over housing costs and school funding have also drawn crowds in France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy.

In France, unrest that began with students unhappy about school conditions grew into larger marches against President Emmanuel Macron's policies. An arson attack gutted the town hall in Limoges. Some observers said the violence could strengthen far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Michel Feher, a Belgian philosopher, called the movements "dispersed points of resonance that still need to be tuned to one another." By Wednesday, no clear winner had emerged in the Israeli election, where Trump had endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.