The pre-election campaign of the Serbian Progressive Party is working at full speed. Regime media sharpens and intensifies the tone and attacks on the opposition. On the other hand, it seems that the coalition Serbia against violence is still invisible, as if less than a month after the election, it still hasn't started the pre-election campaign.
"It is completely normal and expected that, when you have a government that rests on violence, corruption and uncertainty and that has usurped almost all the media in the last 11 years, you ask the question whether they ever stopped campaigning, since Aleksandar Vučić alone was almost 300 times on television with a national frequency. This is the reality we live in, but which we will change on December 17," said the president of the Serbian Parliament Committee for Foreign Affairs in the previous convocation and the vice-president of the Freedom and Justice Party, Borko Stfanović, in an interview with the "Vremena" portal.
Campaign here and now
Given that only a small number of media are open to the opposition, it has to rely on other resources - meetings, social networks, tribunes. How and when will they intensify the pre-election campaign?
"We are going around Serbia, we have made a very detailed and clear plan of campaign activities, we will do everything to reach every citizen of our country, it will not only be larger gatherings in cities, but there will also be gatherings in smaller towns, villages and municipalities," he says. Stefanović, with whom we spoke while he was in Niš for the convention of the coalition Serbia against violence, which took place in the National Theater in Niš. It's a real rarity, he says, that they managed to get space at all because the authorities, "to say the least, don't like the fact that they talk to the citizens at all."
"We will encounter various obstacles, aggression and violence of the progressives on the ground." When we come to a small town or village, they can't stand that our stand is there, they can't stand us talking to citizens, and that's been a long-standing practice. What is new is how the senior municipal officials of the SNS are behaving. we saw what happened in Bavanište. That's their way of working, because if your policy is based on violence, then you apply it to an ever-increasing extent when your power begins to fall uncontrollably because you don't know how to behave," Stefanović points out.
He adds that often their political rivals surround the opposition's stands, do not allow people to approach, printed materials were destroyed, Janko Veselinović was physically attacked by the director of the Public Utility Company.
"This is how a panic-stricken government behaves, a government that does not fight for the support of citizens, but to continue to keep Serbia shackled by corruption and endemic insecurity, because they are aware that falling from power means the beginning of their legal responsibility. Our motives are simply different - we want to get Serbia out of the mud, out of the violence and corruption and uncertainty in which every citizen lives, and they want to keep Serbia in that mud because they function best in such a situation," says Stefanović.
The coalition Serbia against violence will certainly have thirty days of intensive campaign ahead of it.
"It is obvious that the citizens are waking up and are aware of the unbearable situation we live in, that we are chained by violence and corruption, instability and uncertainty." We want to return normality and certainty to Serbia, and in this sense it is important that there are two important civic activities - one is ProGlas and the second is a youth campaign for going to the polls, both aimed at raising awareness of the importance of voting and going to the polls in as many numbers as possible".
How to make the opposition's campaign more visible?
First of all, through comparative work on direct contact with people all over Serbia, which they already do and now, and by intensifying activities on social networks and in the media where this is possible, explains Stefanović.
"We will increase our presence on the ground, and many of the parties of the coalition Serbia against violence have not stopped their actions on the ground, and I think that the citizens have realized and are realizing in increasing numbers that their voice really brings superiority and the different Serbia that we want to make." A normal Serbia, a settled Serbia, a Serbia without violence and corruption. Citizens recognize the root of this problem, the horror and chaos in which we live, and that is the government of the SNS".
In the differences between the parties that make up the Serbia Against Violence coalition, which do exist, he does not see weakness, but on the contrary, "wealth and strength" from which comes a new energy that creates the atmosphere of Serbia's awakening.
What will they do first if they win?
As for the program and goals after a possible victory, Stefanović says: "We will stop the rise in prices and the indebtedness of the country, break monopolies, focus on supporting the domestic economy and agriculture, while respecting every foreign investor who pays workers wages above the national average and brings new technologies." .
And further: "We will introduce a special prosecutor for the corruption of officials, and the police will be led by policemen such as inspectors Milenkovic and Mitic, who discovered the largest drug factory in Europe, and not those who are persecuting them because of it." We will return to pensioners and their heirs the money that the state stole from them by reducing their pensions, just like the old foreign currency savings that were taken from the citizens by the same people who run the country today were returned."
He will certainly pay special attention to education and healthcare, which will not only be reduced to increasing the salaries of employees, but also to changing the relationship that society has today towards the people who save our lives and educate our children.
"Our goal," says Stefanović, "is to liberate every person in Serbia from any form of violence, from peer violence in schools to violence in the workplace where people work for a fixed term for years in fear of losing their job."
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