Ilija Srdanović

An independent, he became known as a speaker at the student-led anti-corruption protests. He was first on the Student List – Students Win, which won the most votes in the Serbian parliamentary election of 25 October 2026.

Career

Srdanović graduated in medicine in Novi Sad in 1995, specialised in internal medicine (2001) and cardiology (2004), took a master's degree in Belgrade (2010) and a doctorate in Novi Sad (2012). He has worked at the Vojvodina cardiology institute since 1997 and has taught emergency medicine since 2018, becoming a full professor in 2025. The movement's biography credits him with dozens of indexed papers and the co-founding of the Resuscitation Council of Serbia. In 2026 he stood for the leadership of the Medical Chamber of Serbia and lost to Miodrag Stanić. At a Novi Sad rally in September 2026 he said nobody had been held responsible for the tragedy because those in power were most to blame. Vreme reported that he was put at the top of the list after a narrow majority of the student plenums dropped Belgrade rector Vladan Đokić, who had been expected to lead it.

Positions

Srdanović calls for a decentralised health system that serves all patients equally. He says Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia under its constitution and has promised not to abandon the Kosovo Serbs; he has described EU accession as not a current priority of the list, saying Serbia's immediate goal is "existential survival". He declined Aleksandar Vučić's invitation to a televised debate. On election night he declared that Serbia had won and that he was proud of a people who had said "no" to the tyrant (N1).

Controversies

After he was named to lead the list in September 2026, pro-government tabloids ran personal attacks on him and called him a covert operative of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. He declined to engage, telling N1 that smear campaigns were to be expected and that the list would stay focused on citizens' problems. In March 2025, while active in support of the protests, he was summoned by police to an informative interview "as a citizen" over a criminal complaint whose subject, he said, had not been disclosed to him; he denied reports that he had been arrested (N1).

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Studenti u blokadi (Student List) · Vreme · N1 · N1 · N1

Photo: https://www.delo.si/novice/svet/vucic-dobil-nepricakovanega-tekmeca-kdo-je-il…, CC0, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)