Students who are blocking the faculties in Novi Sad have announced their criteria for ministers expert governments, while the other students in the blockades are silent. Only the Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy rejected the expert government.
Vojvodina students cited as the first criterion the lack of connection with the executive and legislative power, specifying that ministers must be persons who did not hold positions in the executive or legislative power, that is, those who did not hold any political office.
According to them, the second criterion is non-connection with political parties and movements.
Ministers, according to the students, must not be members of political parties, nor act within political movements that ran or tried to run in the elections, in order to preserve their independence in decision-making and prevent any political manipulation.
Ministers must be proven experts
Ministerial candidates must be proven and recognized experts with significant experience and achievements in their field.
According to the students, their knowledge and competences must be confirmed through relevant academic, professional and research activities.
As the fourth criterion for the members of the expert government, they mentioned knowledge of the work of state administration and management skills.
"Although the candidates must not be politically engaged, they should have enough experience in working with the state administration or similar institutions, in order to effectively manage the ministries and take concrete steps to solve the problems", according to the students in the blockade.
Another criterion is that ministers must have moral conduct, high ethical integrity and clear evidence that they have not engaged in any forms of corruption, embezzlement or unethical behavior, and they must also have support among students, academic circles and the general public.
Exclusive implementation of necessary changes
The students stated that the mandate would be fixed-term - lasting from 8 to 12 months.
"The government will have a clear time frame for action, with a mandate that lasts between 8 and 12 months. This time period will be long enough to implement key reforms and achieve the goals, which have been set as priorities, but also short enough to avoid potentially staying in power for too long. The term mandate allows the government to focus exclusively on implementing necessary changes and getting out of the current political and social crisis, without the possibility of growing into a long-term political entity," the students said.
The announcement does not mention the organization of the elections.
The students propose that all members of the new Government be obliged to give a written guarantee that they will not participate in the performance of political functions for eight years after the end of their mandate.
They state that the goal of the guarantee is to ensure that members of the Government remain focused on solving the current crisis and implementing reforms, without political interests or ambitions that could jeopardize their decisions and actions in the public interest.
Disagreement among students
However, there is no agreement among the plenums of different faculties about whether or not there should be an expert government.
Thus, on April 7, when the blockaded students from the Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy published a statement in which they rejected the proposal of the "expert government" and stated that the goal of that statement was to prevent "the possibility that the student movement in Serbia will make a series of unequivocally thoughtless decisions."
They pointed out that the students should not allow the movement to be manipulated "by those who want to grab political positions behind the backs of the students".
They accused the government of ignoring the student demands by appointing the "expert" Đur Mazut as a mandate holder, but also the opposition and activist groups of wanting their version of an expert government behind the backs of the students and without a democratic discussion.
Such a government, they add, cultivates a "cult" of experts, and it cannot lead anywhere anyway, because the ruling majority in the Assembly would have to vote for it.
In the end, Filozofski students directly accused unnamed fellow students of pushing the option of an expert government without discussion at the "small door of secret meetings".
Pluralism of opinion
Who were they thinking of, it became clear when the statement of the students of the Faculty of Science and Mathematics in Novi Sad arrived, signed by students in the blockade of fifteen other faculties and colleges in Vojvodina.
They write that the authorities will obviously not fulfill the students' demands, and therefore conclude that an expert government is the only solution.
"Since the students have been demanding systemic changes from the beginning and insisting on non-partisanship, we believe that the government with independent experts is the most appropriate solution to the current political crisis," they say.
They then react to the previous statement of the students of the Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy because they state that they are "proud" that there is a plurality of opinions among the students and that not all plenums come to the same conclusion.
"Thus, we clearly show that we are not a product of external influences, that we do not follow anyone's instructions, but that we make decisions independently, through transparent and democratic processes," the announcement reads.
They conclude that the task of that theoretical expert government would be to facilitate the work of institutions, especially judicial ones, which would lead to the fulfillment of student demands.
In that announcement, there is no mention of organizing fair and free elections.
