Serbia’s long-time populist President Aleksandar Vucic resigned Sunday to run for prime minister in October snap elections after nearly two years of student-led protests that had been pressing for just such a poll.

Vucic delivered his resignation speech from the presidential palace in Belgrade, where supporters gathered outside chanting his name.

“I am resigning as president,” Vucic said. “Tomorrow morning I will hand over my duties to the parliament speaker.”

The snap election was a key demand of a student-led movement sparked by the November 2024 collapse of a canopy at Novi Sad railway station that killed 16 people and was widely blamed on corruption.

The tragedy triggered some of Serbia’s largest protests since the fall of Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, at times drawing hundreds of thousands.

Initial calls for a transparent investigation grew into demands for snap elections, which Vucic had repeatedly promised without setting a date.

Earlier this month however, he called an October 25 vote, citing “major turbulence on the domestic political scene”.

First elected president in 2017 and re-elected in May 2022, Vucic cut short his five-year term to campaign for prime minister, although the law did not require him to resign.

“I want to compete as an ordinary man, as one of the people,” Vucic said.

He now heads the electoral list of his right-wing populist Serbian Progressive Party and is its candidate for prime minister.

Minutes before resigning, Vucic used his constitutional powers to pardon dozens of people, including students and his party loyalists, suspected of offences during the protests.

“I have decided to pardon 49 people, 23 of them in connection with the terrible events we have gone through over the past year and a half,” Vucic said, referring to the protests.

Under the law, parliament speaker Ana Brnabic now becomes acting president for up to three months, during which a presidential election must be called.