Students in the blockade they demand from the president of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić to announce early parliamentary elections. They tell the "incompetent" person who interferes and makes decisions that he is competent to call elections and that this is the only way to peacefully resolve the deep crisis into which the divided Serbian society has fallen.
From the rally in his honor in Nis, which was announced as a three-day national assembly but was reduced to a few hours, Vučić said that he had nothing to do with student demands, not even with extraordinary elections, and visibly offended that he had been called "incompetent" for months, told the students that they were not competent to demand extraordinary elections.
Earlier, he angrily explained that he is not thinking of calling elections for the next year and a half.
The students' response was: "Cowards!" In Niš, they played Ceca Ražnatović's song "Kukavica" for him, which went viral in the city.
Shooting at a psychological target
Just as Vučić, who declared himself responsible for everything - from the renovation of school toilets, through foreign and economic policy, to the passing of public judgments in key court processes - was visibly affected by the fact that the students put him within the constitutional framework and did not farm him three percent during the six-month protests, so the qualification that he is a coward hits a psychological target in the dark: there are few public appearances in which the President of Serbia does not highlight his courage.
That's why he sent the President of the National Assembly, Ana Brnabić, to the media arena to tell her that there is no need for special elections, that they will take place "when the time is right", in order to personally escape the mockery.
Just as they tried to amortize the label of "incompetent" on Vučić's back with a barrage of fire, so now the media under the control of the progressives must iron out the cowardly bump on his image.
This will be done by all SNS members who have permission to speak publicly.
Part of the opposition is also offended.
Even part of the opposition is not at all enthusiastic about the way in which the blocked students are demanding early elections. They announce their electoral list on which there will be no place for opposition politicians and that the elections be called immediately.
That idea was supported by the Movement of Free Citizens, the Ecological Uprising, the Green Left Front and the Democratic Party, but the rest of the opposition did not.
The students' request does not sound unreasonable:
the rating of SNS and Vučić himself has never been lower, which proves that he is running away from the elections for the first time like a garlic vampire;
student protests are supported by an overwhelming majority of citizens;
no one has yet explained how the government could be forced to substantially improve the electoral conditions, so this moment should be used;
the opposition leaders have been exposed to merciless barrage fire, unscrupulous lies of the controlled media and representatives of the government for more than a decade, so they seem repulsive to a large number of voters;
they themselves contributed to their unpopularity because they are unable to unite, some of them to overcome their own vanities.
The opposition parties dug themselves a hole when, after the Belgrade elections on December 17, 2023, in which, despite all electoral fraud and manipulations, they won a deadlock in the Belgrade Assembly, they fought bitterly whether, under the existing conditions, they should go to the repeated elections on June 2, 2024, or not. For months after the elections, there were arguments between "boycotters" and "anti-boycotters" over who was to blame for the common fiasco, and before the elections, the boycotters threw cobwebs at the feet of those who dispersed to participate in the elections.
Part of the opposition led by the Freedom and Justice Party of Dragan Đilas insisted that they should not go to the polls before the electoral conditions change, without giving any explanation as to how they intend to force the government to give up the conditions that ensure its victory.
Certain leaders of the opposition, such as Zdravko Ponoš, now consider it pointless that there are no representatives of opposition political parties on a joint electoral list. He was offended by that idea. And again, the story is introduced into the game: first the change of election conditions, and only then the elections.
The opposition found itself where it was more than a year ago, arguing over the same issue.
Vagueness of the student's request
On the other hand, the students would have to find a common language with the opposition parties, because without their logistical support, the chances of changing the government under these election conditions would be reduced, if the pressure on the streets and the level of the rebellion would force Vučić to actually call the elections.
Even the students do not provide an answer to the rebus that the opposition is facing since Vučić came to power in 2012: how to force him to make any concessions regarding democratic standards that would fundamentally threaten his rule, that is, on what scale the protests should be to force him to relent. What degree of rebellion would be sufficient?
Six months of demonstrations across the country, blockades of universities and daily roadblocks, huge central protests in Novi Sad, Niš, Kragujevac and on March 15 in Belgrade, when around 300.000 people gathered, were clearly not enough.
