The call that they Students in the blockade received from Aleksandar Vučić, the one where he calls them on debate in front of all the cameras, was flatly rejected. Such an outcome is not surprising because the ruling regime in Serbia faces only one simple demand for extraordinary parliamentary elections. There is no room for debate, since the reasons for this requirement are visible to the naked eye. An additional problem for Aleksandar Vučić is that he has always been incapable of dialogue and debate, and not just for the past twelve years.
These days there are many reminders of how Vučić last participated in a debate in 2012, against Dragan Đilas, today the president of the Freedom and Justice Party. That is true, but mere presence in a debate is not the same as active participation. It was interesting these days to watch again and again what those duels looked like in front of the cameras. Interesting and worrying, because the content is the same as today, not from 2012 but even from 2005. But let's first look at how in 2025 we ended up in a situation where we are watching televised duels that are exactly two decades old.
CALL OR TRAP
photo: marko djoković / tanjug...
"The President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, invited the representatives of the student blockade movement to a debate in front of all the cameras," the Presidency of Serbia announced on Friday, August 22. At the same time, citizens could listen to his address on the Instagram account of Budućnost Srbije AV (which is one of Aleksandar Vučić's official accounts).
"Demonstrations have been going on all over our country for nine months. Some people want change. At first they masked it with demands for justice, and then they openly started talking about political changes and the demand for elections, even though they had previously rejected them," said Vučić.
From November 1, 2024 to today, this is the first time that he has managed to squeeze out of himself that it is about "the work of the people" and "demonstrations across the country". These two short phrases are the closest Vučić has come in his confrontation with reality. However, this is not enough to qualify him as an interlocutor in the dialogue. He still refuses to face the fact that on several occasions, at protests during the winter and spring (Novi Sad on February 1, Kragujevac on February 15, Nis on March 1, Belgrade on March 15), perhaps a million people stood on the streets of Serbia against him and his regime.
However, he still does not perceive this rebellion politically but personally, and again he gives politics epithets that it does not have, because he speaks as if politics, for all participants, except for him, is something nasty and dirty. Because, at first, the authentic desire of the students in the blockade were the initial four demands, which were demands for justice, but were political because they could only be fulfilled by political will.
From November to May, students' faith that the government would fulfill those four demands was strong, albeit naive. When they realized that this was not going to happen, they demanded elections. Nothing was masked there, neither then nor now. All that happened was that from November to May, the students went through the process of political learning and maturation, became convinced that this government could not fulfill their demands as it is, and requested elections, as a way to a new, different government.
BEARS IN THE HOLE
"Despite all the bad things I think about their demands, I think it's important to hear them. I think it's very important to listen to each other. I think it's crucial to renew the dialogue and I tried to hear them," said Vučić. If he was trying, why didn't he hear them until now? It is hard to imagine that they could have been clearer and louder. He himself has hardly ever had a cleaner, more honest opponent, an opponent open to dialogue, real, true dialogue.
Instead, they have been subjected to only violence since the first day of their rebellion. Let us remind you that due to violence and beatings of students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, the blockades began. And that was the first step in the radicalization of the student rebellion. SNS supporters beat them, they responded by locking down the faculties and boycotting classes. But at the same time, they started the process of political literacy, so they quickly realized that the all-seeing, omnipresent Vučić was not competent to negotiate with them.
THE MAN WHO CANNOT TALK
Vučić's last TV debate was in May 2012, when his opponent was Dragan Đilas, the mayor of Belgrade at the time. The debate took place immediately before the presidential elections, in which SNS candidate Tomislav Nikolić won. So, he was still in the opposition. And from that debate it was clear that he doesn't know how to talk, that he doesn't know how to be a participant in dialogue.
However, the crowning proof of this thesis - that Vučić is incapable of conversation - lies in another debate, which is about two decades old. The year is 2005. The venue is Pink Television, which was significantly more polite and decent back then than today. The presenter is Tanja Jordović, always a polite, polite and professional journalist. The actors are Dragan Đilas, then a close associate of the President of Serbia, Boris Tadić, and Aleksandar Vučić, the general secretary of the Serbian Radical Party. Tanja Jordović announces them both very politely, in a slightly joking tone she even mentions that they are both tall.
Aleksandar Vučić gets the floor and already before the end of the fourth minute of the show, that is, not of his presentation, but of the show, he calls Dragan Đilas a thief. A few seconds later, he waves papers that he refuses to show, but claims that they are proof that Djilas is forcing large advertisers to advertise through his agency. Đilas asks that Vučić name at least one company, Vučić says – Simpo.
"Did I force Simpo to do something?", Djilas manages to say. "No, Tadić forced Simpo", Aleksandar begins to change his statement. An hour and twenty minutes pass in noise and according to the pattern: Vučić presents, Đilas starts to answer, Vučić interrupts him with insults, Tanja Jordović appeals not to talk in that tone. It is especially terrible that in 2005 Vučić, like today, says the same things: "I was the best student", "thugs who are robbing Serbia", "secikes from Dedinje", and so on, and so on...
All in all, a man who is fundamentally incapable of conversation is now inviting students to a dialogue, even in front of the cameras.
SOMETHING SIMILAR HAS ALREADY HAPPENED
There has been no room for dialogue in this society for a long time, since Aleksandar Vučić sucked up all the space in which dialogue could be conducted. However, we had one attempt, in the summer of 2019, when several rounds of meetings were held at the Faculty of Political Sciences, organized by the Open Society Foundation, under the direction of Milan Antonijević, as well as according to the rules of "Chetam House". In short: after the meeting, participants can use the information they heard at the meeting, but they must not state from which participant the information came.
The mood of the opposition for that dialogue was weak, primarily because of all the chases and persecutions they went through, but still, there was some will. However, after each of those meetings there were addresses to the media, where representatives of the authorities would utter brutal insults against those with whom they were sitting at the same table a moment before.
Vladimir Orlić, then the head of the parliamentary club of the SNS, and today the head of the Security and Information Agency, took the lead in this.
photo: TanjugORGANIZED SUPPORT FOR YOURSELF: Supporters of SNS at weekend counter rallies in dozens of cities (Kikinda)
WE HAVE NOTHING, AND NO WHERE TO TALK
"I propose and offer a conversation and debate on all our televisions, on all our portals, with their legitimate representatives whom they choose. When I say they, I mean: whoever the representatives of the student-blockade movement choose, whether professors, whether politicians, whether students," said Vučić in his invitation.
Already in this sentence, it can be seen that he despises them. As long as he uses the term "blockades", he conveys an unwillingness to dialogue. Vučić and his team painted that term with a negative meaning in these nine months, and it is offensive today.
But let's see what that space looks like where he wants the dialogue to take place... "On all our televisions, on all our portals", is an offer that brings unrest. He does not mean all televisions and portals in Serbia. When he says "ours", Vučić really means his. He thinks of the televisions and portals that on two occasions, before the protest on March 15 and before the one on June 28, contributed to the almost destruction of the lives of a good number of students and activists.
On two occasions, those television stations broadcast illegally obtained materials, which caused 12 people to be detained, and who knows how long they will remain there, under the charge of subverting the constitutional order. Six young people are out of the country because of those "all televisions". Those televisions and those portals still to this day, moreover, at this very moment while this text is being written, broadcast nastiness and insults at the expense of students, rebellious citizens and all those who at least resemble the opponents of Aleksandar Vučić personally. Not even the opponents of the ruling coalition anymore, but him.
Another question now arises: why is there an offer for dialogue, from a man who cannot speak, in a society where there has been no space for dialogue for a very long time? In order to even have the right to call for dialogue, Vučić must answer the question of why he has stifled and prevented dialogue so far. Why was one part of the media scene, the one we call independent today, exposed to satanization, criminalization, why is the number of independent media so insultingly small and why was the media market collapsed and destroyed, within which they could exist without fear for survival?
Furthermore, why did the same Vučić tame, subjugate and reduce this other part of the media scene, which can no longer be called the media, to something worse than a propaganda weapon, to a platform for instilling fear into the bones of dissenters?
Although the most important, the media is not the only platform for dialogue. There are more. Why did SNS actively work for a decade and a half to kill any possibility of dialogue in the National Assembly? Why are our local, city and municipal assemblies places of verbal and even physical confrontations? Precisely because of Aleksandar Vučić's irrational need to gag, suffocate and suppress any possibility of criticism.
photo: ljiljana stojanović / phonetLeskovac
WOUNDED EAGLE WITH A BASKET OF GIFTS
Two days after the call for dialogue, Vučić surrounded himself with baskets of groceries and presented "wonderful measures" for the recovery of Serbia. In short, merchants will be forced to reduce margins, bankers will be forced to reduce interest, and citizens will be able to buy cheap goods to their heart's content with the help of favorable loans. The offer of apartments for young people is running out, but if young people join forces with pensioners, they will be able to buy both an apartment and a kulen without feeling it. And on that occasion, he referred to the rebellious citizens and students in the blockade, but he was not too harsh. He let his stormtroopers speak his mind.
SNS President Miloš Vučević wrote on the social network X that the students in the blockade refused the offer to talk because "they don't even have a 'p' from the program for Serbia, they only have a plan for: strike, burn, block - at least we got some things out of the way". That this will appear as an argument was already clear from Vučić's call to confront "programs and visions".
And that part of the call is pretty unfair because we already know what we'd be watching. Vučić would list his toponyms and add up the kilometers of roads and square meters of apartments built during these 13 years, then he would ask "what have you built during that time?" Of course, there is something to answer to this, but the rebel society answers to it every day: we did not get rich, we did not collapse institutions, we did not kill anyone through corruption, we did not have a state marijuana farm, we did not suspend the constitutional order in part of the territory so that Belgrade would emerge on the water, we did not rig tenders...
But why, after these nine months, after the death of 16 people, after being run over by cars, attacked by thugs, breaking jaws, after police torture, arrests, beatings, after bringing thugs before ordinary people... When everything is taken into account, the party to whom the invitation was sent has no reason to accept it. Moreover, she never had. This conflict began with violence, not as a clash of opinions. There is no reason to trust the bully now that he is ready to dialogue.
photo: TanjugLucani
WHY IS HE DOING THIS?
When the call for dialogue saw the light of day, many thought that Vučić appeared in front of the public ready to admit defeat. Or at least to negotiate a peaceful withdrawal from power. This is a very naive interpretation, because all his motives and intentions are hidden in the call itself.
"I am ready against... I am not against, I apologize. That confirms my mistakes. I am ready to enter into a dialogue, a public debate with three or four who think differently," he said.
He is interested in seeing their faces. Not the faces of students, but the faces of people who should be on the student list. This is the most miserable part of the whole "dialogue" operation. Let him see who they are, dig up dirty laundry and discredit them.
It can't, we have played that game many times in these 13 years. If Vučić wants to see the faces and names of his political opponents, there is a very simple way.
All he has to do is call an election.
