After 14-year right-wing ruleClean-up starts as Serbian students movement prepares to govern

Belgrade residents on Wednesday washed away politically charged graffiti that had stained city walls over months of protests, as Serbia's student-led movement prepared to govern after its seismic election victory.

A student-backed list defeated the right-wing SNS nationalist party of Aleksandar Vucic in a national election Sunday, ending its 14-year rule in the Balkan nation.

The historic victory came after two years of protests sparked by the 2024 collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad that claimed 16 lives.

As celebrations faded, citizens focused on cleaning up the remnants of a divisive political period.

Belgrade residents paint over politically charged graffiti during a clean-up campaign in the Serbian capital on October 28, 2026, days after a student-backed list won the country's snap parliamentary elections. The campaign, backed by the student-led movement, aims to remove graffiti, rubbish and other traces of nearly two years of political protests and restore public spaces across the city.

© AFP

Directly after the vote on Monday morning, students were joined by other citizens in cleaning a park that a pro-government encampment had illegally occupied for over a year outside the presidency building.

By the afternoon, children were enjoying a freshly scrubbed playground, and all signs of the camp were gone.

On Wednesday, the student-led movement called on Belgrade residents to help restore buildings, streets, and parks after two years of "unappealing" changes. Its social media post said this should include "offensive graffiti ... that have marred building facades for some time".

Dozens of people whitewashed a tunnel in central Belgrade whose walls had become pockmarked with competing graffiti from opposing political sides.

In recent months, the ubiquitous abbreviations, 'FCK BLK' or 'FCK SNS' were tagged across buildings around the city, along with offensive slurs particularly against the student movement.

'BLK' targets the protesters who were labelled blockaders by the government, while the latter was used to target Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

A Belgrade resident paints over politically charged graffiti during a clean-up campaign in the Serbian capital on October 28, 2026, days after a student-backed list won the country's snap parliamentary elections. The campaign, backed by the student-led movement, aims to remove graffiti, rubbish and other traces of nearly two years of political protests and restore public spaces across the city.

© AFP

The clean-up came as the student-backed list cemented its position in a nearly complete vote tally.

So far it has won over 52 percent of the vote giving it around 140 of the 250 seats in parliament, enough to comfortably govern alone, according to the central election authority.

Students will have to wait until the final vote count is certified before parliament can be constituted, allowing the leaderless movement to form a government and name a prime minister.

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