Serbia holds a parliamentary election as strongman Vucic faces protesting students

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Long lines of voters formed outside polling stations across Serbia on Sunday for a highly contested parliamentary election that is a showdown between the Balkan country's strongman leader Aleksandar Vucic and a diverse movement of university students who have led protests against him for almost two years.Though Serbia's 6.4 million voters get to choose from 18 parties hoping to enter the 250-member Parliament, the election has taken shape as a referendum between Vucic's right-wing Serbian Progressive Party and the youth-backed Students' List.The main contenders are believed to be polling neck-and-neck, making Sunday's election the most uncertain in recent years. Turnout is expected to be high and could push most smaller parties below the 3% threshold needed to make it into the assembly.While the increasingly authoritarian Vucic has routinely outplayed Serbia's fractured opposition in the past, the leaderless youth movement has proved to be a tough opponent that rattled his firm grip on power in Serbia like no one else could in the 14 years since his party took office.A students' victory likely would resonate beyond Serbia as countries across Europe face youth and student protests.Long lines form at polling placesVoters queued at polling places around the country from the early hours on Sunday as local election monitors said turnout was considerably higher than in the previous elections.The state election commission said around 35% of eligible voters had cast ballots by noon compared to 21% in 2023. The student movement on its website dubbed the long lines of voters across the country “queues of hope.”In the capital, Belgrade, Vucic stood alongside his wife for nearly two hours before casting his ballot, and later told reporters that he hopes for a peaceful election day and that he and his party will respect the election result.“The will of the people is the will of God: vox populi, vox dei,” Vucic said.

“If we lose, we will recognize the electoral will. If we win, no one will take it away from us.”Vucic said his camp will announce reliable projections about three hours after polls close at 8 p.m. Asked about whether the apparently high turnout means people want change, he said: “Let’s wait for the result.”After casting his ballot in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad, Ilija Srdanovic, a physician who is the first of 25…