Serbia holds snap parliamentary elections on 25 October, and at the top of the "Student List - Students Win" slate stands a man who until recently was known mostly in medical circles. Ilija Srdanović, a cardiologist from Novi Sad and a full professor at the medical faculty. Once his candidacy was announced, the pro-government tabloids went on the attack - and that says more about the state of things than any poll.

Who the man is

Born in 1970, he graduated in medicine in 1995 and completed his cardiology specialisation by 2004. Since 1997 he has worked at the Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases in Sremska Kamenica, and he became a full professor in 2025. That is the biography of a doctor, not a politician - which is precisely the point of the list that put him forward.

He entered public life in February 2025, when he addressed medical students with the line that it is "entirely normal to support the demands for a better future for our young people". On 20 March 2025 police questioned him in the capacity of a citizen, but he denied being arrested or mistreated. Note how small that difference in wording is, and how much it means in a country where questioning can soon turn into something else.

Eleven points and one gap

The Student List's programme has 11 points and is aimed at fighting corruption, reforming the judiciary, repairing healthcare and regulating the media. Foreign policy, however, remains largely undeveloped - and that is what is worth watching. It is easy to be against corruption; it is harder to say where you will stand between Brussels and Moscow when the question becomes unavoidable.

The pro-government tabloid Informer calls him a "violinist" and an "ultra-blockader", and levels unsubstantiated accusations about his work without producing documentation. That is the same mechanism we know well beyond Belgrade: when the argument is weak, attack the biography; when that is clean too, invent a label.

Why this is visible from Skopje as well

Media close to Aleksandar Vučić see Srdanović as the biggest threat to the current government. That is an admission no poll can deliver - regimes do not spend tabloid artillery on candidates they are not worried about.

And the scene in which a student movement turns into an electoral list, and that list then becomes the target of the highest-circulation media, is not a Serbian speciality. The Balkans has watched this play with different actors. The question left is whether this time the ending will be different - and how long a cardiologist can stay out of the political mud he is being dragged into.