On Oct. 25, Aleksandar Vucic’s ruling coalition will face Serbia’s student protest movement and established opposition parties at the ballot box. Vucic, who resigned as president in September to seek the premiership, wants to extend his Serbian Progressive Party’s 14-year hold on power. The danger extends beyond whether his party manipulates the vote. His government could portray protests against the result as a Western plot, crack down on opponents, and accelerate state capture.
Georgia offers a preview of what could follow Serbia’s election. The ruling parties in both countries have spent years weakening institutions, intimidating critics, and tilting elections toward incumbents. The useful comparison is what happened after Georgia’s contested October 2024 vote. Georgian Dream turned an electoral dispute into an opportunity to narrow the space for opposition, watchdogs, and protest. Vucic has the tools to attempt something similar.
In Georgia, manipulation began well before Election Day. Georgian Dream passed a foreign-influence law targeting foreign-funded organizations and media. Election observers documented pressure on public employees, misuse of state resources, and compromised ballot secrecy in roughly a quarter of polling-station observations. More than 1,200 complaints followed the vote, but the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights found that many lacked effective remedies. Georgian Dream retained power, opposition parties rejected the results and boycotted parliament.
Georgian Dream intensified its crackdown after the election. Police violently dispersed protests and detained more than 500 demonstrators. Authorities also jailed opposition leaders and froze civil society groups’ bank accounts. Georgian Dream suspended its pursuit of EU accession talks until 2028, enacted tougher foreign-agent restrictions carrying prison sentences of up to five years, and required government approval for foreign grants. It also moved to ban five opposition parties through the Constitutional Court.
Serbia’s election has its own stakes. The collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad in November 2024 killed 16 people and sparked a sustained anti-corruption movement. Students have now formed an electoral list, turning their protest movement into a direct political challenge to Vucic as he seeks to reclaim the prime minister’s office and its broader executive powers. The Oct. 25 election will test whether the movement can translate mass mobilization into parliamentary power.
The playing field is already tilted. In September, Serbia’s independent election watchdog, the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, found that the ruling majority received 75% of political airtime on national television. Vucic alone received 60%, while the governing side received 93% on public broadcaster RTS 1. CRTA also reported irregularities in signature certification, alleged pressure benefiting the governing list, and obstruction of the Students’ List. Serbia’s 2023 election had already prompted ODIHR to document pressure on public-sector workers and abuse of state resources.
The safeguards have not caught up. ODIHR’s Oct. 9 interim report noted unresolved concerns about suspicious voter registrations and said the voter-register audit commission’s first report was due Oct. 28, three days after the election. That leaves questions about the roll unresolved when ballots are counted. The report also identified unaddressed recommendations on intimidation, public resources, and media oversight. A Students’ List candidate has already accused authorities of electoral manipulation, while an opposition party backing the list has called on supporters to prepare to defend an electoral victory in the streets.
Vucic has a ready-made justification for any crackdown. Serbian pro-government outlets routinely portray opponents as organizers of a Western-backed “color revolution.” Moscow reinforces the message. In 2025, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin met Russian intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin and accused Western services of trying to destabilize Serbia. This is familiar in Georgia, where Georgian Dream portrayed the 2024 election as a choice between peace and war, and Russian intelligence alleged a U.S.-backed regime-change plot. In both cases, the accusation casts domestic dissent as foreign subversion.
If a manipulated result sends Serbians into the streets, the danger is not only arrests that night. Authorities could use unrest to justify tougher protest rules, investigations, or funding restrictions on election monitors, and to pressure independent media further. Serbia has already considered a foreign-agents law, while investigators have documented spyware targeting critics of the government.
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Western governments must prepare for what comes after Oct. 25, not simply monitor Election Day. If credible evidence establishes systematic electoral fraud or a violent crackdown on protesters, the European Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom should immediately impose coordinated sanctions on responsible officials. If authorities systematically manipulate the election, Western governments should also refuse to treat the result as a legitimate democratic mandate.
Georgia’s disputed 2024 election accelerated Georgian Dream’s state capture. A similar post-election crackdown in Serbia could allow Vucic to tighten his control over state institutions and further suppress political opposition.
Keti Korkiya is a research analyst in the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Dr. Ivana Stradner serves as a research fellow at the FDD’s Barish Center for Media Integrity.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
