Serbia Election Marks the End of an Era
The country’s student-led opposition movement secured a historic victory in parliamentary elections. But the new government will have its work cut out, says CFR senior fellow Charles Kupchan. Pollsters and the Republic Electoral Commission estimated turnout at nearly 70 percent, which Reuters noted was the highest turnout since the breakup of Yugoslavia. The vote came after nearly two years of student-led protests sparked by the deaths of sixteen people when a canopy collapsed at a renovated railway station in Novi Sad, a disaster that protesters blamed on corruption and cronyism. Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and author of the new book Bringing Order to Anarchy: Governing the World to Come, spoke with CFR about his recent trip to Belgrade. There is no clear leader of the Student List, and, as you noted, many of the winning candidates have…