Catch A. V: Why the regime can't meet the students' demands

Why, then, does the regime not fulfill the demands of the students and thus get rid of these annoying dechurlija (about 600 of them), especially since the demands, from a civilizational point of view, are completely justified (legitimate): to publish the entire documentation on the reconstruction of the railway station in Novi Sad and prosecute the batterers? Is there anything more normal?

The most obvious answer is that the documentation would confirm that the culprits (not, therefore, those responsible, but the culprits) for the murder of fifteen people are at the very top of the government, as well as the prosecution of the batterers and the investigative procedure would lead to the head of the regime (which is currently collapsing).

The facts, however, do not affect the regime because, in philosophical-legal terms, the facts they become facts only when they are confirmed as facts by the court. The fact, for example, that Aleksandar Obradović, a brave man from Valjevo, established with all the evidence, that Vučić and his crew were robbing the citizens of this country through "Krušik", did not even reach the court.

But even when the facts reach the court, as in the case of Aleksandar Mitrović (son of Željko Mitrović) who killed a girl with a car and then fled the scene of the crime, the punishment is almost non-existent. It is important, therefore, to be close enough to the regime and facts mean nothing.

Master of meaning

Why is that so?

The answer is somewhat surprising: precisely because the regime rules de facto (de facto), and not based on some principle, i.e. legitimacy (justification, de jure). Legitimate is the rule that rests on a kind of contract between the citizens and those whom the citizens, in free and fair elections, delegated to manage the country in their name and for their benefit. That's how it should be in democratic republics like Serbia.

However, in these 12 years, the regime did not organize free and fair elections, it destroyed the republic and republican institutions (free and fair elections are the institutions that justify the rule), and it never confirmed its legitimacy. To that extent, the regime rules illegitimately and illegally. And to rule without legitimacy means to rule factually with the help of propaganda - the fact is not what is confirmed by an institution, a court, but what is said by the master of meaning, the leader of the police, the army, the party militia.

Two regime solutions

Only at this point does the answer from the first sentence of the text come: why does the regime not fulfill the demands of the students?

Not, therefore, because the factual situation would be revealed (we know that anyway), but because the fulfillment of the demands would introduce the regime into an institutional arrangement, and for the regime that is the catch.

What is the catch? The mechanism that opens the door, but in the sense that it is a novel Kvaka 22 introduced by Joseph Keller, it is a mechanism by which, opening a door, it closes. The catch is a rule that is set up to cancel itself, so it cannot be fulfilled.

A regime that is issued as an institutional arrangement (it identifies itself with the state), but which the government exercises factually (thus ignoring institutions, citizens and the common interest) by fulfilling the demands of the students would bring into play what it shuns more than anything else - the judicial system - which means that would cancel the factual situation and introduce a pincip.

And if he introduces a principle, a regime that rules unprincipledly (arbitrarily, factually, based on the master's will) would pull the factual rug from under its feet and simply bow down. Here's Kvaka.

At first, the student demands seemed unambitious and easy to fulfill. The students did not ask for anything revolutionary, they did not ask for a change of regime, they did not use harsh words, they did not promise anything. They only modestly asked to introduce the principle of justifying the rule.

This and such a regime, it turned out, cannot fulfill those demands because in that way it would abolish itself. He, the regime, has nothing but propaganda (lies), party militia (beaters), police and army. There are only two solutions for the regime: either they will try to mobilize the police and the army against the citizens, or they will dismount.