Aleksandar Vučić

Aleksandar Vučić has dominated Serbian politics since becoming prime minister in 2014 and president in 2017, building a political machine that critics say blends state resources with ruling-party campaigns. Freedom House has repeatedly downgraded Serbia's democracy score, citing media capture — the majority of national broadcast coverage favors the government — and irregularities documented by OSCE observers in successive elections.

Mass anti-government protests erupted in late 2024 and continued into 2026 following the collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad that killed over a dozen people, which demonstrators blamed on government corruption in infrastructure contracts. Vučić has alternated between conciliatory gestures and characterizing the protest movement as a foreign-backed attempt at destabilization.