How did the students see through and despise the progressive regime? Why do they show maturity instead of naivety? What will Vučić never be able to understand? What is the height of his authoritarian temperature? And that's why he looks more and more like his character from the Koraks and Petričić cartoons
Vucic says the problem is solved. He fulfilled everything student demands and now continues according to the regular plan of combat training and other progressive activities. However, commemorative blockades are still spreading across Serbia. High school students also take to the streets, and support for the rebellion comes from SANU, the Writers' Association and Miloš Biković.
What's the matter?
Under one - no one trusts Vučić anymore. From heavy use, his alternative truths are worn, tiresome and irritating. Kind of like the ad blocks on Pink. In this context, the fact that the essential demands of the students have not been met is not the last thing - they do not know the flow of money and anything else related to the reconstruction of the Railway Station in Novi Sad, and they continue to be attacked at roadblocks. Forced resignations of small fish and their apprehension on the principle of sport fishing (catch, photograph, kiss and release) are far from justice.
Two - these young people have been growing up under the progressive government for years. That's why they saw through and despised her a long time ago, so they don't submit their demands to Vučić. They simply tell him - you are not competent. In translation: we will not play as he plays us, the state and the legal order are not, nor should they be, one man. There is Vučević, the government and the judiciary - they are in charge, they are wondering. There is no naivety here, but there is great maturity. The dismantling of the freak government, among other things, begins with its return to the constitutional limits, regardless of who the power holders are. Thus, among other things, the kidnapped state is freed.
Finally, and thirdly, the students' revolt is the sincere cry of a society brought to the brink of survival by authoritarianism, corruption, criminalization, partocracy, arrogance and incompetence of the regime... The consequences are fifteen dead under the canopy of the renovated Railway Station in Novi Sad. That's why supporting students is not a matter of politics, but of elementary ethics for each of us.
MATCH MATCHING THE FAN WAY
photo: marija janković...
Progressives who decide on something these days seem a bit confused. They don't trust Vučić either, but they still believe in him. In fact, they expect that, like the leader of the fan-interest mine, they will restore order in the stand by all permitted and illegal means. That is - to quell the riot, return the students to the benches and put a cloth with chloroform on the mouths of the awakened public.
At this moment, Vučić can hardly fulfill the aspirations of his own clients. Like any authoritarian leader, he is tormented by the dilemma that he will appear weak and demoralize his followers if he gives in, and if he tightens, he can further mobilize opponents and expand support for students.
Since he is unable to resolve the dilemma, the Serbian president is using a mix of threats and attempts at bribery. He doesn't really like either one or the other. Because no matter how hard he tries, Vučić does not have the capacity to understand students. Sam confirmed it best. Talking about his days at the Faculty of Law, he said that he - while Goran Vesić and others were "taking students out" - was warming the bench and geeking out. But why did the youth of the early nineties take to the streets? Well, because of opposition to war, sanctions, isolation, misery...
How to explain that to Vučić, who sat straight from the faculty amphitheater in the armchair of Sešelj's party secretary general? Not at all. Neither then nor today can he imagine that someone fights for the public interest, honesty and justice without any personal interest. That's why the matchmakers - little accuse students of being pawns in a hybrid war, little offer them money "from the state", little progressive provocateurs and the police beat them, little benevolence to "give them everything they ask for" and solve the housing issue...
Like any real authoritarian under high temperature, Vučić knows that the key to the crisis is held by public opinion. And that it is rapidly changing and that it should by no means be further provoked, is evidenced by the support students received from faculties, universities, high schools, professional associations, public figures, and even from many who have remained silent until now during the largest number of years of progressive government.
They have not encountered the latter until now. Also, the largest number of ordinary SNS members are eager for a normal life; those people are disgusted by the constant campaigns, the hunt for safe votes, the serf's kuluks with which they pay off their jobs, the atmosphere of fear and subjugation... And they stand under the canopy.
WHERE TO GO, BROTHERS AND COUSINS
Even if the students stop the blockades while this issue of "Vremena" is being printed, they have achieved the most important thing. The good spirit of solidarity, personal courage and not agreeing to lies, corruption and, in general, the opposite way of running the country, can no longer be put back in the bottle. It is already operationalized politically.
Can the opposition use it? If they don't make a big mess and shoot themselves in the knee again - which they prefer to eat bread - they can. In the future elections, he may not get votes for himself as such, but it is very likely that he will get them because a large part of the voters could exclusively vote against the progressives.
Serbia will still listen to Vučić's promises. However, during each of them, the echo of student whistles will echo in front of the Presidency, and he will look more and more like his character in Koraks and Petričić's caricatures.
Vucevic, Brnabić, Đuka and others will not falter either. But as time passes, they become executed like the director of the Novi Sad high school "Jovan Jovanović Zmaj" who, instead of gathering strength and confronting the students, provokes a public scandal by kneeling for hours in the yard.
It is certain that the students opened the door to changes in the country. However, they are not around the corner. Everything that is happening is just the beginning of the beginning, but it is incalculably important.
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Less than two days of blockade - that's how long it took to see how weak and powerless the public media service is, both from the outside and from the inside. At the moment of writing this text, it is the eighth day of the blockade, and the sixth that RTS is not broadcasting its program. They also seem to be facing a strike inside the house. And the essence of blocking RTS is not in what it publishes, but in what it keeps silent
In the months after the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, the flames of rebellion spread throughout Serbia. The first protests started in Novi Sad right after the tragedy. The authorities responded with arrests, police cordons and intimidation, but instead of calming down the protesters, new protests followed.
The rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Đokić, has been the target of top state officials and regime tabloids for months, who label him as an insidious instigator of student protests, an opportunist, "the face of evil" and "the leader of the criminal octopus." How and why a rector became "state enemy number one"
"I'm standing in the cordon, and my daughter is shouting at me 'aw, aw, killers'. What should I do? If they ordered me - I would throw down my baton and bulletproof vest and stand on the side of my child," a police officer from the south of Serbia, who works as needed in the Belgrade Police Brigade, told "Vreme"
The recent formation of the Đura Macuta government is part of the regime's revenge and cynicism. This can be seen most in the "black troika" of new ministers appointed to deal with the parts of society that are the leaders and symbols of the big rebellion that lasted for several months, the cause of which was the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, which claimed 16 human lives. Education, universities, unsolicited media and parts of the judiciary that refuse to listen to orders, either publicly, with announcements, or hiding behind legal procedures, should be dismantled. Those who will have no problem doing everything they are told, even reinforcing the orders with their own inventions, are chosen for this.
RTS is blocked, universities do not work, and threats, insults and calls to the prosecutor's office and the police to arrest blockers, rioters and terrorists are pouring out from the top of the government. The Serbian state has turned into a farce
Anyone who condemns the regime's targeting of people from the media, the non-governmental sector, the opposition and universities, must not agree to this targeting of RTS editors and journalists either.
The archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
What is happening in the country and the world, what is in the newspapers and how to pass the time?
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