Aleksandar Vučić waited nearly two hours in line to vote in Belgrade on Sunday, per Reuters. The students he spent two years dismissing had been waiting a lot longer than that, and they won.
I've watched a lot of strongmen fall. This is the first one who got a preview of the line.
Here's what's real, per Reuters, the AP, the BBC and Al Jazeera. Vučić, who has run Serbia as prime minister or president since 2014, conceded Sunday night. "It is clear that we have lost these elections, the Student List has won," he said in a televised speech. With almost 99 percent of the vote counted, the student-backed list had 52.7 percent to 39.2 percent for the alliance led by his Serbian Progressive Party. That's 139 seats to 97 in the 250-seat parliament, per Reuters. Turnout was close to 70 percent, the highest since 1992.
The movement began in November 2024, when a canopy at the Novi Sad train station collapsed and killed 16 people. Protesters blamed corruption and negligence. Vučić, per the AP, denounced the movement as a foreign-led attempt to unseat him. Then he called a snap election in September to settle the matter. It's settled.
Per the AP, Vučić blamed Serbia's independent media, unnamed European countries and an "American deep state." That's three villains for one loss. Most politicians who lose by 13 points blame the weather. He blamed two continents.
Moscow sent its condolences in the form of advice. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised Vučić's work on relations with Russia, per the BBC, and said the new government should understand that cooperation with Moscow is in Serbia's interest: "But, as you know, it takes two to tango." Reuters compared the result to Viktor Orbán's defeat in Hungary in April. The Kremlin's two favorite dance partners in Europe are gone. It's dancing alone.
Now the winners. The Student List ran 250 mostly unknown candidates, including professors, actors and farmers, led by Ilija Srdanović, a cardiologist who was in tears after the concession, per Reuters. The movement has no official leader on purpose, to dodge smear campaigns. Nobody knows yet who becomes prime minister. A country that spent 12 years with one man in charge of everything now has 139 people in charge of figuring out who's in charge.
Parliament gets 30 days to convene after final results, then up to 90 days to form a government. Serbians just stood two hours in line to vote, so they're in shape for the wait.
Picture a fictional Novi Sad tram driver named Dragan who has voted against Vučić in every election since 2014. Sunday he finally won. Monday he realized he doesn't know the new prime minister's name. Neither does the new prime minister.
On the sewer scale, this rates four rats out of five. One rat for the two-hour line, one for the deep-state alibi, one for the Kremlin's tango lesson and one for the train station canopy, which did more to end his career than any opposition party managed in 12 years. The fifth rat is still in line to vote.
Vučić waited two hours on Sunday. Turns out the line was for the exit.
And here's your bill: regular gas averaged $4.48 a gallon in the U.S. in September, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Serbians waited two hours in line to fire the people they blamed for their problems. You wait in line at the pump, and nobody has to concede anything.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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