Saturday at Novi Sad she was first of all dignified. The kind of commemoration deserved by fellow citizens on whom tons of concrete fell while innocently waiting for a train, chatting or smoking cigarettes under canopy.
Every person, every child who was at the commemoration on Saturday could have been under that canopy a year ago at damn 11:52. Now they are united by the feeling that life is in Serbia cheaper than a few million euros that can be stolen in this or that tender.
Huge set, powerful. Then the silence is more impressive. And when it was said, everything that needed to be said was said. And then the people dispersed.
Rallies are not military sieges.
Social networks and, to a large extent, the media were fixated on the wrong thing – exactly how many people were there? Is it a lot or a little? What will that crowd do? do?
To avoid hindsight, a month ago I was asked on television whether I expected the meeting in Novi Sad to "correct some mistakes from the past". I guess you meant the talk about "wasted energy" March 15 or June 28th.
"Then I expect a huge rally that we'll see if it goes peacefully. But nothing more or less than that," I said.
Here, gatherings - and commemorations are not exempt! - seen as a gathering of military legions. Like, if the nobles bring enough infantry to the battlefield, then a fortress can be stormed. Then it will fall mode.
It never worked like that anywhere.
Still, how much?
MUP announced that there were 39.000 people at the commemoration. Past experience teaches us that it should be multiplied by at least two.
Luckily for the pedantic, we have the Public Assemblies Archive, a group of enthusiasts who count maltena assemblies without fail. Their assessment will be the most authoritative. Because, it has always been and always will be, that people increase their gatherings and decrease other people's.
But, I say, in this case, all of that was missed, even though the finalists are on To the informer all day long they showed pictures from a drone (filming the place where people had already gone for a walk) and shouted "they broke, they broke".
Exactly how many people came to the memorial service? Enough to be impressive and dignified, the largest gathering in the history of Novi Sad, despite cheap distractions like the cancellation railway transport.
Other numbers matter.
Figures from the street are important, they send a message of strength, they encourage neutral, and wavering political opponents. But they are not so important anymore for two reasons.
First, the count was completed when the students gathered 325.000 people in Belgrade - two to three times more than on the Fifth of October and six times more than the Vučić regime ever gathered with all the buses and carts.
Since then it is clear who has more. Especially which side has more free people. Only an idle man engages in new proofs of axioms.
Elections are important now.
Second and most importantly, the fight whose trigger was death under the concrete has long since moved on to another field, the only one possible against a government that knows no shame and responsibility, which has decided to hold on to the sims of power as long as it can.
Namely, on the field of such and such elections in which the so-called student list. It requires lung capacity, steel will, thorough invisible work, trampling around villages, persuasion at parties and in bars, self-sacrificing control of choices, sitting on boxes.
All very different from being impressed by the numbers on the streets.
That's why it's good that Novi Sad saw a huge, dignified commemoration. And that no one tarnished it by pretending to be a revolution that day.
