SERBIA’S student movement on Thursday demanded the resignations of top officials in the police, intelligence agencies andthe judiciary as they prepare totake power after a historic election win last weekend against former strongman leader Aleksandar Vucic. The students at a news conference also urged Serbia’s election authorities to officially declare the final results of Sunday’s ballot so that a newParliament and Government can be formed. The Students’ List movement swept the parliamentary election on Sunday against Vucic’s right-wing Serbian Progressive Party, which has ruled unchallenged for 14 years. The outgoing authorities remain in control as the formal transition of power will take several weeks. “Changes are starting now,” student Filip Ubovic said at the news conference held at a central Belgrade park that used to be a sealed-off area occupied by Vucic’s loyalists. “Institutions belong to the citizens and the law applies to everyone.”

 

Vucic’s party has gradually taken control over all State institutions since it came to power in 2012. The SNS party has been accused of rampant corruption and cronyism, links to organised crime and pressure on the judiciary, police and the media, which the populists have denied. The students on Thursday asked public servants to prevent outgoing officials from destroying documentation or evidence of potential wrongdoing. Vucic on Thursday held a news conference, accusing the election winners of “revolutionary terror” after groups of people stormed the Informer TV station that led the pre-election propaganda branding the students as traitors and enemies of the State. Suspicions of State corruption in infrastructure projects two years ago set off a wave of street protests after a collapsed canopy at a train station in Serbia’s north killed 16 people after a renovation. The students led those protests before challenging and defeating Vucic at the early ballot on Sunday. The students’ win marks the first time that a grassroots youth movement toppled a well-established political lead