The smell of plasma biscuits mixes with exhaust gases as over a hundred buses enter Požarevac in a convoy. They park in an industrial area where nothing is working anyway, except for Bambi. Most of the registrations are from Belgrade, but there are also those from Jagodina, Bor, and Svilajna.
"All those who come probably have to," says Fr for picnickers a saleswoman in the nearby Lidl.
But the impression is deceiving. From the bus to the city center - it's not even two kilometers - mostly gray heads walk. There is also a younger world, some even, it seems, high school students, but pensioners are the main support of "walks against blockades".
Photo: NRWhose city?
Walks that are not walks against blockades that have long since ceased to exist. This Saturday, Požarevac, along with Kraljevo and Vranje, was selected for a bus landing that should show the support for the president Aleksandar Vučić there is also the fact that the "people" rose up against the "blockaders".
Pension is great.
The tobacco bazaar is closed to traffic and full of sacred, patriotic music, mobile toilets, red, blue and white bouquets of helium balloons. "I support Vučić and I'm here for him," says the well-intentioned pensioner from Belgrade.
"We block the blockers. It's a dredge," he continues, with a smile that only grandmothers have. To be fair, he says, no one has done as much as Vučić. He did everything, especially for pensioners, she has 64.000 and has no desires, so she lives somehow.
According to the authorized assessment of the "Vremen" reporter, between five and ten thousand people gathered here, which quickly becomes twenty thousand on Informer. But that is a gross exaggeration, even if you take into account the good number of deserters who spread out in the cafes and the park. The set belongs to the relatively soft category - it is easy to catch a curve.
Djuro from the other world
The moment is spicy. In one week, on the anniversary of the death under the concrete, Novi Sad will host probably the largest gathering in the history of the city. It will bring liveliness to a phase that many observers of the political scene have described as "dithering."
Photo: NRVirtual reality: Drone pilot to record the rally
Or as a "balance of powerlessness" - neither the government can quell the protest, nor has the protest been able to topple the government so far. In that interval, everyone does what they can and can do.
And the Serbian Progressive Party is the best at organizing supporters - willing and unwilling - for a rally. "I work here in Požarevac in the communal office. The boss said to come and we were told - yes," says one woman. Her colleagues around her, each assigned a larger flag on a pole. Today they have a double job - a rally to clean up the city. But, she says, she loves Vučić and would have nothing else to say about the political situation.
A hundred meters away is Prime Minister Đuro Matsut, separated from the people and separated from reality. "I could say that this is the free will of the people. An indicator that people think for themselves," he told reporters and continued that Serbia was never under constraints and that it got out of "what happened at the beginning of the year", from that "other Serbia" and the problems it created.
Curiosity, what is it?
Otherwise, the reporter's experience with people at the rally is close to the experience of Jehovah's Witnesses - as soon as they hear that someone is a journalist, they turn and run away.
Branko, a pensioner from Požarevac, wants to talk. He nibbles on the seeds, collects the husks nicely in his hand. "Now you're going to classify me in the category of the Vučićs, but that's not it," he says. He also went to student gatherings to see.
Photo: NRThere's a stage, there's music, there's everything.
"I want us to be normal, not to look at each other crosswise, not to fight. I am for Serbia and for the president, and tomorrow someone else can be president, otherwise I am against the Progressive Party," he says.
These people who came to Požarevac, he says, were not forced to do so - they could easily pretend that they were sick. "They came out of some curiosity," he says.
Even before the formal head of the Serbian Progressive Party, Miloš Vučević, took the stage to repeat what had been heard many times, part of the people began to disperse. At dusk to the buses, just in case.
A man filmed them from the terrace and shouted: "Welcome to Požarevac, welcome! Zabela is on the left, just so you know! When you go to visit him." From below, an elderly man with a blue balloon waved at him.
