Tactical move: House arrest for PSG provincial deputy Radivoj Jovović

Will it a fire of protest cover all of Serbia? Will the number of people on the streets increase? Will the rebellion grow stronger? Will it students persist in blockades faculty until the fulfillment of all their requirements?

This question bothers not only the government, but also the opposition. Some want to maintain the semblance of normality in Serbia at all costs, others want to show that nothing is normal.

For now, the number of people participating in various protests is small, but they are almost daily, and their participants are very persistent.

The dissatisfaction of a large number of Serbian citizens is certainly simmering under the surface, so the political game is being played around whether it will spill over into the streets over time, whether the protests will become massive, or whether, as so far in the last ten years, it will retreat into a dark corner. apathy.

Student problem

A big problem for the government of Aleksandar Vučić is that this time the students also rebelled, that one after another the faculties - in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš - that they occupied and blocked their work are "falling".

The informal groups of students behind it refuse to speak to the media, expressly distance themselves from opposition political parties, but have almost the same demands.

They started to go out into the street high school students.

For Vučić, Ivica Dacić and their older radical and Espeesov comrades, this certainly evokes uneasy memories of the clenched fist of the "Resistance", which has now been replaced by a bloody fist.

For now, the government does not touch them, the regime media are restrained. It is estimated that it could only cause a counter-reaction among young people.

However, Vučić could not stand it, so he mocked them on Wednesday evening from Switzerland that they were a bunch of misery and that he had nothing more to comment on.

Progressive beating troops

The first instinctive reaction of Vojislav Šešelj's students was to bring out the party's beating troops against the demonstrators, who since November 1 have been demanding political and criminal responsibility for all those they associate with the death of 15 people on whom the canopy of the railway station fell in Novi Sad, with the aim of conflicts and vandalism are caused, for which the opposition would be blamed. A tactic already seen in some previous protests.

However, speaking from Switzerland, Vučić also announced a new approach: the arrest and filing of criminal charges against protest participants for assaulting an official, for which multi-year prison sentences, handcuffs and unreported road blockades can be imposed.

Therefore, anyone who touches the shield of a member of the Police Brigade or the Gendarmerie, and does not have parliamentary immunity, can be prosecuted for the criminal offense of assault on an official. This also applies to resisting plainclothes policemen.

When you keep the police, the Prosecutor's Office under control and you can count on a certain number of judges, it is certainly more effective than hoodlums who, admittedly, did not have orders to really start beating citizens. The assessment is, it will be, that the demonstrators would not back down in front of them.

Demonstration exercise on Radivoj Jovović

The demonstration exercise was performed on the provincial representative of the Movement of Free Citizens, assistant professor Dr. Radivoj Jovović.

Police Minister Ivica Dacic showed a clip on Pink TV showing Jovovic attacking police officers and said: "Whoever raises a hand against the police goes to prison."

The PSG announced that Jovović was taken to the Stari Grad police station around midnight on Wednesday. He is charged with assault on an official.

"After we found out that the search for assistant professor Dr. Radivoj Jovović was announced in the police, we came in front of the Stari grad police station. He went in, checked in, and his lawyer was there the whole time. We learned that Radivoje was arrested and that he will remain at the police station until six in the morning, when he will appear before the prosecutor. He is charged with the criminal offense of assault on an official," stated the Movement of Free Citizens in a video address on the X social network.

They added that this is not the first case of people from their movement being arrested, intimidated and prosecuted, "and Radivoje because he sought justice for fifteen fellow citizens who died at the railway station in Novi Sad".

The prosecutor proposed an extension of detention up to 30 days, and the Court ordered a measure of house arrest "due to the danger that Jovović will repeat the crime" he is charged with.

"This is a graft", to arrest the MPs, "the regime is entering the terminal phase", said PSG president Pavle Grabović