I was also part of a student movement that toppled a corrupt government — dangers lie in wait - ABC Religion & Ethics - ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The streets of Belgrade erupted in celebration after Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat in this week’s parliamentary elections. What began as protests over the deaths of sixteen people when a concrete canopy collapsed at the renovated Novi Sad railway station in November 2024 — a tragedy that was widely attributed to government negligence and corruption — grew into a nationwide movement against authoritarianism.

Almost two years later, the Student List, a coalition of candidates backed by the student movement, secured a parliamentary majority, bringing an end to the rule of Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which had dominated Serbian politics since 2012.

Watching the celebrations unfold, I found myself reminiscing. I know what it feels like to dance in those very streets. To see students and citizens, who have spent almost twenty-three months confronting violence and oppression under the Vučić regime, now celebrating in the very spaces where I once stood as a member of Otpor (The Resistance), the student movement that helped bring down Slobodan Milošević in October 2000, is profoundly moving.

People celebrating the victory of the Student List at the parliamentary elections after Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat, at Slavija Square in Belgrade, Serbia, on 26 October 2026. (REUTERS / Djordje Kojadinovic)

While student activism is hardly unusual, my own involvement was less a youthful rebellion than a family legacy I chose to carry forward. I was born in Australia but often say I was raised in Serbia, having spent much of my formative years studying and working there during a time of war and revolution. My parents were involved in opposition politics against Milošević, and our journeys from Australia brought me to a country undergoing a violent transformation.

The Yugoslavia of my family’s history had once been a kingdom, then a socialist federation under Josip Broz Tito. By the time of my childhood, the federation was disintegrating amid wars driven by historical grievances and competing nationalisms, as the peoples of Yugoslavia sought to determine their own political futures. What followed was a succession of states and political arrangements, accompanied by devastating and, in my opinion, senseless bloodshed.

Each time we returned to Serbia, I encountered a country seemingly fixated on winning a race to the bottom. The wars had brought the breath-catching horror of violence, while economic collapse produced the world’s third-worst episode of hyperinflation — hyperinflation that saw pensioners digging food out of rubbish bins, banks closing and supermarket shelves standing empty. Meanwhile, the steady criminalisation of institutions and public life was transforming Serbia into something unrecognisable. Perhaps most troubling was the transformation of a people whose historical identity was so often bound up with their own suffering into a nation increasingly associated with the suffering inflicted upon others.

By September 2000, after years of war and political repression, another election offered the possibility of removing Milošević from power. Electoral manipulation was hardly unfamiliar to Serbians. In a country where even your great-great-grandfather, dead for decades, might somehow have cast his ballot for Milošević, another stolen election was hardly surprising.

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević (left) casts his ballot beside his wife and coalition partner Mirjana Marković at Yugoslav elections in Belgrade, on 24 September 2000. (REUTERS / PEK / AA)

But this time, despite the regime’s manoeuvring, Milošević had lost. His opponent, Vojislav Koštunica, a constitutional lawyer and opposition politician who had emerged as the presidential candidate of the united democratic opposition, secured a first-round victory in the federal presidential election. The regime refused to recognise the result, insisting instead on a second round. The refusal unleashed a fury that could no longer be contained. Strikes spread, the country ground to a halt, and the opposition called for mass demonstrations in Belgrade.

I was a teenager, watching from my perch deep within the throng of protesters as people from across Serbia descended on the capital on 5 October 2000. After weeks of protests — not the years endured by today’s student movement — we made our way through a haze of tear gas and chaos toward the federal parliament. That day, Milošević’s rule collapsed. We had won, but not what we thought we would. The democratic dawn we assumed we would wake to never quite came.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Koštunica speaks to reporters as he arrives in the town of Bujanovac in the Pčinja District of southern Serbia, on 27 November 2000. (REUTERS)

There is a particular historical irony in watching a new generation confront a political order led by a man who once served in Milošević’s government. Vučić had been minister of information from 1998 to 2000, during a period marked by severe restrictions on independent media and the NATO bombing campaign. For those of us who belonged to the generation that helped bring down that regime, witnessing another take up the struggle against familiar faces is both extraordinary and sobering.

And so, as Serbia celebrates, I wanted to offer a few reflections as someone who remains, in spirit, a member of the Resistance, in the hope that the disappointment of an unfinished revolution might not become this generation’s inheritance as it did mine.

Of the 250 seats in Serbia’s parliament, the Student List is projected to hold 140, while 104 remain in the hands of Vučić’s political allies. These are seasoned political operators who may not be good politicians, but are exceptionally skilled at manoeuvring and manipulating a system they know intimately to their advantage. Do not underestimate them.

We learned this the hard way. When Milošević conceded defeat, we believed the worst was behind us, unaware of the deals struck with elements of the criminal underworld and security apparatus that had helped sustain his regime. Those networks did not disappear with his removal. Three years later, Zoran Đinđić, the reformist prime minister who had helped bring democracy to Serbia, was assassinated by men connected to those very networks.

We had underestimated just how deeply corruption had taken hold, and how devastating the consequences of that complacency could be.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić speaks during an interview with Reuters in Belgrade, Serbia, on 4 February 2026. (REUTERS / Djordje Kojadinovic)

Back in the post-Milošević era, the system inherited by the democratic opposition was so deeply entangled with corruption that dismantling it required navigating institutions still populated by figures from the previous regime. Some would return to positions of considerable power. Among them was Ivica Dačić, a prominent figure in Milošević’s Socialist Party, who went on to serve in successive Serbian governments, including Vučić’s. Political accommodation may have been intended to contain the resentment of those displaced by the revolution, but it did little to prevent the rats from finding their way back into the proverbial cheese factory.

The fall of a regime does not necessarily herald the arrival of democracy. This is a lesson I still look back on today. You are exhausted after almost two years of struggle, violence and pain. We were exhausted after years of war, deprivation and international isolation.

Looking back, I wonder whether we were prepared for what democracy would demand of us. We wanted the freedom we had fought for, but the work of confronting our past and dismantling the institutions that had sustained Milošević was far from over. Democracy would require more than removing a dictator. It would demand a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths and endure the upheaval of genuine reform. That struggle is yet to come. Brace for it.

It is admirable to see today’s students, alongside their supporters among academics, artists and members of a once-forgotten intelligentsia, take pride in resisting the influence of political leaders and vested interests. And while adhocracies can keep a movement agile, the demands of governing require something more enduring.

A movement can resist authority without a recognised leader, but governing requires people willing to exercise authority and answer for their decisions. Now is the time to move beyond the streets and into the rooms where decisions are made. Choose those who will represent the people, and ensure they remain answerable to them. Do not allow the idealism that sustained your movement to obscure the political realities of the democracy you deserve.

The exploitation of historical grievances has marred Serbia for decades, if not centuries, and helped create the conditions in which some of the most heinous war crimes of recent history were committed. Be aware of the shadows of the past, lest they come to define our future.

Remember, the difficult work of democracy begins when the celebrations end. But for now, celebrate what you have achieved. There are moments in history that never leave us. My moment in front of parliament was one of them. This will be one of yours.

Milica Stilinovic was a member of Otpor (The Resistance), the Serbian student movement that helped overthrow Slobodan Milošević in 2000. She is an Australian researcher specialising in technology-facilitated harms and extremism.