Opposition parties, canopy and rallies

One of the most famous fairy tales in the world, which Charles Perrault plucked from the folklore of many peoples for eternity, is the source of various jokes and pranks. Little Red Riding Hood is in question, of course. One of the jokes says that a wolf met the young protagonist in the forest and asked her where she was going. She says - to Azerbaijan. Wolf to her: For God's sake, what are you doing there? To see GRANDMOTHER! Addendum - and to participate in the Global Warming Summit. The wolf had no objections.

Elem, our president was the other day, still "shaken" because of it Novi Sad tragedy and "trampling the tricolor" in front of the party premises, video Azerbaijan and Baku. Participating in a meeting on climate change, he used the opportunity to read a letter to his fellow journalists from our region, strongly reprimanding them for reporting by only watching how they would spit on him, which, by definition, is anti-Serbian action. It is commonplace in his propaganda that the media from the region wish evil on Serbia, and support the Serbian opposition (read: anti-state elements). You can read that thesis every day in local tabloids. Vučić rebelled because regional journalists, as well as a sea of ​​"social cutthroats" of Serbian origin, criticized him for using the presence of the funeral from the shelter of the injured grandfather and his grandchildren in Kovilje to make some political point. To drop a bucket of crocodile tears.

But why are regional callous journalists doing all this, what does the regime say? Apart from the innate hatred towards Serbia, the progressive ventriloquists say, they cannot stand our president because he caused the eruptive economic and every other progress of Serbia. They cannot calmly look at the economic tiger that takes giant steps, jumps over all obstacles and hunts deer. They are jealous. And scared. In Azerbaijan, the president himself confirmed this, and he is always well informed.

THINGS ARE DIFFERENT

However, things are different. Vučić's economy is like a Novi Sad canopy, just waiting for the moment when it will collapse and make many unhappy. Ask any serious economist. The progressive government turned Serbia into a somnabulic, phantasmagorical horror-despotism, a fairy tale in which Red Riding Hood is not only eaten by the wolf, but also massacred and thrown into one of the mass graves. What is happening is interesting to the citizens of the region, even if it does not affect them directly, including the media. However far the situation in their countries is far from good, what is happening in Serbia attracts attention for its tragic, morbid and unprecedented bizarreness, just as attention is drawn to "reality shows" in which two people have sex under a quilt, and then Kristijan Golubović comes, beats them and teach them a moral lesson.

Corrupt cynics would say something quite the opposite of what the media clusters close to the government claim. They would say that the biggest enemies of Serbia would have to be perfectly satisfied with the fact that Vučić and his team are at the head of Serbia. Even the most evil citizens of our country could not come up with anything worse. It is like an endlessly long "Chinese torture".

Among the inhabitants of Serbia, there are those who think relatively similarly. They are not enemies of Serbia, but they will say that after all these decades, Serbia "deserved radicals".
And they don't go to the polls. There are not many of them, but there are some. They will say: whoever cursed us, did not harm us, and he had a reason to curse us.

AND NOW THE OPPOSITION...

Well, now let's avoid jokes and phantasmagoria, since the matter is extremely serious. The question is: does that international expert who swears at us in three shifts produce the entire political infrastructure here? Is his opposition joining Vučić in the revenge package? Many would sign an affirmative answer, especially those on the social networks mentioned for the third time. And especially after the opposition rally on Monday, which according to various analysts and "analysts" was a complete fiasco. And what exactly is the opposition being accused of. Not without reason, of course.

photo: 021 / phonet

Let's start in some order. After the gruesome tragedy in Novi Sad, this city held, regardless of the riots that followed it and which were largely another progressive "burning of the Reichstag", a magnificent gathering, according to many the largest in the history of the traditionally restrained capital of Vojvodina. The messages that were sent were furious and clear: the canopy is a symbol and a consequence of the highly corrupt, thuggish Vučić government that works exclusively for its own bottom and against the public interest. Secret contracts are both a source of corruption and a paradise for various scammers, who endanger human lives with their incompetence and greed. Where control and all other institutions do not function or are meaningless, no one is safe. The meeting actually showed that what the critics of the government have been saying for more than a decade - at times many people called them fanatics - became crystal clear to everyone. And probably even to those who may have voted for SNS in the recent elections, for whatever reason.

Although it was not overly visible, the rally in Novi Sad was organized by the opposition, with some political groups being more visible than others. Of course, with the enormous, selfless support of various representatives of the so-called civil sector. Some sort of principled and logical agreement was to organize the next meeting very soon, already on Thursday, in Belgrade, in order to exert additional pressure on the government to fulfill the demands for changes, political and criminal responsibility, and the disclosure of all secret contracts with the help of which 65 million euros of budget funds were used to destroy the railway station in Novi Sad, probably forever. And of course, the most important of all, the secret contracts that resulted in the tragedy of 14 people losing their lives in the most terrible way possible.

The enormous energy that Vučić and his "spinners" invested to minimize the political damage to the government, as a result of the tragedy, shows that it was clear to them that the devil played a joke and that they were caught with bloody hands in a jam, so to speak. And the fact that it is clear to them means that the public opinion surveys that they consult every day also said so. All in all, it is an opportunity for the opposition and the critical public to take the initiative and, as they say, politically articulate the citizens' anger. In cooperation with the so-called social opposition.

AND WHAT HAPPENED?

And what happened? For completely unknown reasons, the next meeting is scheduled for next Wednesday. Without any logic and valid reasoning. Opposition members make decisions without consulting anyone. They could also have scheduled the protest for mid-December, there wouldn't have been much difference. Realistically, everyone was amazed. It may be harsh to say it in the context of the tragedy, but the fact is that the anti-regime parties had the opportunity to consolidate after the spring nonsense and the quarrel over boycott and non-boycott. So, it was as if they found themselves in front of the opponent's empty goal, and then scored an own goal with incredible skill from the other end of the field.

And then the next move. However, the meeting is moved to Monday, "at the request of the citizens". The damage has already been done and this move has only further deepened the odium among the citizens who otherwise can't wait for some failure of the opposition to pour a cistern of Zrenjanin water on them. When you can't do Vučić, call the one who can't do anything to Vučić and is in charge of it!

The explanation of the date shift is also interesting. They say, citizens asked, citizens think so. At the previous meeting, which was scheduled for Wednesday, the public's opinion was again called for. What is the key problem? The opposition does not have serious public opinion surveys in front of it, to make decisions based on them. And that has been proven a hundred times so far. Instead, they listen to influencers and various moral xi fb panickers, and based on them they turn around the sun. It's not that social networks can't be a valid reflection of some kind of public opinion, but even that requires serious research, software and analysis, not just impressions.

WHAT WAS THE OPPOSITION OBJECTED TO??

What did the opposition complain about? Some claimed that he was trying to kill the anger of the citizens because parts of it were working for Vučić. It is a well-known conspiracy theory, which sometimes really rests, at least apparently, on good arguments. However, it may still be an optimistic version of our political scene. The more pessimistic one is that the opposition is incompetent and stupid by default, and that it is led by political dilettantes, as other critics have claimed. We also heard that the relations between the opposition parties are so dynamic, so to speak, preoccupied with the struggle for personal positions, that the reality around them becomes quite irrelevant for them. They live, don't they, in a world of their own.

Then one more complaint. They have become entrenched in the congregations, and they don't really care that something fundamentally changes. They have not only the will, but also the courage and knowledge for that. The tragedy, one influencer will say, completely exposed both the government and the opposition. We need, again, new people in the opposition, those who will relevantly represent the young people who are the symbol of the latest protests. And it is true that young people "dominated" over them, both with courage and innovation. This was especially evident at the Novi Sad rally and the subsequent blockade of the Petrovaradin bridge (on Thursday). It is true that a good part of the opposition does not have the best communication with them, sometimes it even seems to see them as competition.

Anger descended on the opposition especially after the Belgrade rally on Monday, which was declared a major failure. "He who repeats the same moves over and over, and expects a different result, is stupid or has no intention of achieving a different result", we could hear such things. Realistically speaking, this meeting was actually declared a fiasco in advance, and everyone couldn't wait to take down the grandfather's holster from the attic and direct their anger towards the opposition. No one took into account that it was raining on Monday and that it was some kind of unidentified public holiday, during which many were swept away from the inhumanly structured capital.

photo: nenad mihajlović / tanjug

A LITTLE SENSE AND BALANCE

Now let's try to add some grain of reason and some balance to all these fierce words and flood of understandable emotions. First of all, let's start with what is meant by opposition. We will not talk about how it came about, but it is made up of a small mountain of different political parties that have different views, different attitudes, ideologies, and strategies. For example, many of them were very angry because of the decision to schedule the rally for Wednesday, and that it looks completely identical to other rallies, with the same possible consequences. That is, without consequences. They failed to impose their position, and they did not want, at least not directly and clearly, to go public with it, precisely because of the great pressure of a critical part of the citizens that they must unite and cooperate at any cost. Any disunity is quickly punished.

When we say opposition, we don't really know exactly what and who we are talking about. The context is to blame for that, because most of the opposition parties did not have the opportunity to profile themselves specifically, through individual performances in the elections. Elections, among other things, are for that. Thus, it appears as an amorphous mass, thus vulnerable and confused. No one, but absolutely no one, even tries to find differences between the opposition elements. It is not by chance, the regime also made an effort in this sense. As in Hungary, the same story, until the third time was born - a certain Peter Magyar (Magyar Péter), who will not be with either the opposition or the government. This former Orbanov became very popular because of that.

Let's move on. At the same time, the opposition is blamed for wanting to hijack the protests and anger of the citizens, and for not being proactive enough in the protests themselves. At the same time, it is also demanded that she be invisible at the protests, and that she take the initiative, for example, to fight with progressive thugs and what not. Sometimes the same individuals require both.

And then that story about courage. Surely a large part of the citizens would welcome some kind of radicalization of the protest, but the majority is certainly not in favor of it. Well, Vučić would not have sent his hooligans to destroy the City Hall in Novi Sad if some research agency had not judged that it would not benefit the opposition and the citizens.

In addition, there is that transference of anger that we have talked about on several occasions. Citizens are powerless in the face of a totalitarian regime, and then they take out their anger on someone close to them. It's that situation: you're frustrated at work, mad at your boss, then you come home and spill a pot of soup on the floor because it's not hot enough.

Regardless of the countless shortcomings of the opposition, the following should also be kept in mind. What is happening now is a consequence of the fact that we all watched more or less calmly as Vučić's team burned the opposition activities to the core in the period from 2012 to 2017. It was only that year that some alternative political offshoots began to sprout on the scorched earth. So, in those few years, he rounded up his power, and we remained silent. Not realizing that by destroying the opposition, he also destroyed democracy. And who cuts our hair!

We should not ignore the fact that opposition activists are exposed to all kinds of daily, gruesome pressure and attacks. When they are attacked, we are also mostly silent. We mean, it's in their job description. But it's not really, not in a normal state, it's normal for them to go through countless tabloid tortures, whose stereotypes have miraculously moved into critical public opinion.

Maybe it's wrong, but it's understandable to some extent: many moves and many statements are taken and made by oppositionists trying to forestall the reaction of Vučić's propaganda. That is why many topics have disappeared from the opposition public - who would dare, for example, to show sympathy or empathy towards neighboring nations. In the end, on one side is the government and on the other side is the poor opposition, which often has no money or the ability to purchase even basic high-quality sound equipment for the rally. As many printers refuse to print their material.

Not to mention that, unlike in the nineties, there is no support from the West.

photo: milica vucković / fonet

SORT OF CONCLUSION

Therefore, criticizing the opposition is necessary, there are reasons for it and how. But sometimes it is necessary to rock a little, cautiously, what was born from the scorched earth. Because it's better to have a kilava than no opposition at all. That mantra that they are just taking up space that some others would use better is not very realistic. We don't see very many fierce critics who would replace the cafe in the garden with hard and dangerous opposition work, follow the line of greater resistance. If we throw out the baby with the dirty water, the one above will happily squirm.

So, before we throw stones, let's take a look in the mirror. Surely none of us is completely sinless that the human race has fallen on our necks. A little more reason and political education, and less emotion and moral panic.