Pensioner with student prescription

They raised the slogans "Students sad kolo vode" and "We are from the youth side" in the center of Belgrade, they walked after the students to Novi Sad, welcomed them on the way at the gates as their own children and grandchildren, stood up in small places and answered Aleksandar Vučić's unpleasant questions at his rallies. All this was done by pensioners in Serbia in the last few weeks.

The organizer of the gathering of pensioners on February 5 at Trg Republike in Belgrade himself had to admit to "Vreme" that he was surprised when he saw how many people came out. The gathering was organized in support of people five decades younger than them. Also at a time when public opinion polls show that pensioners are the most loyal potential Vučić and Serbian Progressive Party voters.

"I don't remember ever seeing so many pensioners supporting the idea of ​​the youth," Miloš Grabundžija, president of the Union of Pensioners of Serbia "Nezavisnost", told Vreme. "The influence that students have on us seniors is incredible. At the protest, I also saw retired members of PUPS, the party that participates in the government. There were also military personnel, retired civil servants, who had never gone out before. We are all sorry in some way that our children and grandchildren live in such a country."

PENSIONER'S CATHARTHRIS

Snežana Baralić Bošnjak, a political scientist in her seventh decade, came out among the 7.500 participants, as estimated by the Archives of Public Meetings that were on the street that day. She told "Vreme" that day she gathered her college class from '73. years, now mostly pensioners.

Just a few days earlier, Snežana walked 80 kilometers behind the students, on a protest march from Belgrade to Novi Sad.

"Students are the catharsis of Serbia, but also the catharsis of our pensioners," says Mrs. Baralić Bošnjak for "Vreme". "I saw that slogan and now I'm spreading it everywhere. For too long, there has been mistrust towards young people in our society, the logic of 'what do you, yellow-billed, know, you still need to learn'. Now we see that this yellow-billed bird has something to tell us and explain."

Snezana has complete trust in the students, like a mother and a grandmother. She has worked with young people for a long time, so she has no problem recognizing in them the driving side of society.

"I am fascinated by the amount of enthusiasm and energy that I saw while walking with students to Novi Sad," says Snezana. "They are all very colorful and interesting, not only in their dressing, the type of music, but also in their opinions. They show us love for Serbia, some completely new patriotism, in the most beautiful sense."

She herself, she adds, was on the street and participated in political events during the nineties, as a peace activist and a member of two women's organizations, although she was never in a political party. During the years of wars, hatred and violence in the Balkans, she hated nationalism and patriotic songs.

However, when he hears the students singing Far away or Stand up Serbia, she doesn't hate it because, she adds, she also heard We are dancing. dirty theater in their repertoire and concluded that it does not matter to the students what the Croatian song is, but what message it carries. That they are not nationalists, but patriots, a word that she avoided herself, and with the students, it took on a new meaning for her.

Snezana lives in Pančevo, in a smaller community, and she complains that her neighbors, also pensioners, do not share her enthusiasm for student blockades and protests. Among the main comments are that the students do not even know the names of those victims, that the dead are not commemorated as it should be, that the students are mercenaries and that they have nothing to do.

Public opinion surveys also show that the majority of pensioners think like Snezana's surroundings.

Two-thirds of those over the age of 65 are against protests. They believe that foreign and domestic enemies are trying to take over power and harm Aleksandar Vučić in this way, according to a survey by Crta from mid-December last year.

The German newspaper "Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung" had an insight into similar results of the Ipsos survey from January this year, which was closed to the public.

There is talk of strong support for Aleksandar Vučić among the over 60s, about 40 percent of whom regularly go to the polls. The journalist of the newspaper adds that "in Serbia, it is impossible to successfully conduct a policy against that group", and that the Ipsos survey states that "that part of the population has the most trust in Vučić, and not in the students". However, "Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung" writes that it is about research that SNS conducted for its own needs, and not for public display. In order to "understand the mood in the country and adjust their policy and stay in power accordingly".

HOW TO READ THE NUMBERS

Although the polls show what the public already knew, the remaining results of the Line still show a big change. Mostly about the ways in which news reaches the oldest. Thus, when the average pensioner in Serbia wants to be informed, he first of all puts on his glasses. Soon after, he turned on the television. As many as 60 percent of them watch public service, while 20 percent follow the news on Pink.

The TV, it turns out, sometimes turns off. Because, when the pensioner finishes watching the media, which are partially or completely under the patronage of the government, he takes off his own glasses and puts on new ones - with a kind of student dioptre. This is exactly what the Crata research on the support of Serbian citizens for student protests showed, in which it is revealed that as many as 40 percent of pensioners in Serbia cite conversations with family and friends as the largest secondary source of information.

"A quarter of pensioners support the protests, which shows us that the students did a good job and talked with them," Vojislav Mihailović, director of public opinion research in Crta, explains to "Vreme". "This is a way for pensioners to get information that they cannot see on television close to the government."

MOBILE TELEVISION

The students, it seems to Mihailović, have managed to penetrate to the oldest ones also because they come from all over the country, and there is hardly a family in Serbia that does not have a student, at least in the broader convocation. That is why it turned out that it is not possible to denigrate the student, because the people in his environment simply know him.

That's how every student became a mobile television because he took the news to the place he was from, whether it was to talk to his family or go on a weekend. In this way, student protests very quickly emerged primarily from Novi Sad and Belgrade.

According to Mihailović, the support was also contributed by the fact that "the student demands are very clear and narrow enough to be acceptable to citizens, even the oldest ones, who cannot find anything wrong with them. It was enough for the students to convey them and explain them to the elders".

It should be borne in mind, adds Mihailović, that the research was done in mid-December, and since then protests have entered almost every municipality in Serbia and student processions have reached a huge number of pensioner family gates.

"We definitely see that the situation is changing from day to day," he adds.

The voices of the oldest part of the population, the "Vremena" interlocutor agrees, are very important for any political order. Their attitudes are the most stable and the most difficult to change. Nevertheless, the research showed that one third of this group sees ministers in the government as politically responsible for the fall of the canopy, and another third sees the city government in Novi Sad. The attitude of pensioners towards criminal responsibility for the same event is also interesting - a third think that the relevant ministers should also be held accountable before the law, in addition to the contractors.

"The government is probably aware of that, and that's why we got the resignations of ministers, and then the fall of the government," says Mihailović.

Almost all pensioners who participated in the research have heard about the protests. However, they are poorly informed about faculty blockades and why and how they are organized. Mihailović says that in the answers you can hear how much the oldest part of society accepts the manipulative narratives of the state, because they say identical sentences that can be heard in the tabloids. "In previous surveys, the largest number of pensioners stated that they were optimistic, that was their primary emotion," says Crta researcher. "After the fall of the canopy, most of them are worried and scared."

THEY HAVE THEIR OWN PROBLEMS

Not only the fall of the canopy and the loss of 15 lives, as well as the enthusiasm and originality of the youth, pulled pensioners out of their political slumber this winter. "Every fourth respondent in retirement mentioned the economic problems in the country as dominant, and only 10 percent of them said that Kosovo is the central problem of Serbia," explains Mihailović.

Thus, among the slogans at the rally in support of the students, there were signs with the words "Give us back the pensions you stole in 2014". The slogans alluded to the reduction of pensions in the period from 2014 to 2018, which the government implemented by justifying the agreement with the International Monetary Fund, the crisis of public finances and austerity measures.

It is estimated that around 840.000 pensioners were damaged at the time for around 840 million dinars. Although the pensioners sued Serbia, the European Court of Human Rights made a decision rejecting 11 lawsuits due to the reduction of pensions as inadmissible.

"Pensioners remember", says Miloš Grabundžija from the Union of Pensioners of Serbia "Nezavisnost". "But I believe that the theft is even harder for them because 10 years ago the average pension was 192 euros, but then they could buy much more in the store than today with 50.000 dinars." Our purchasing power has shrunk incredibly.”

The Serbian dinar is now worth 29 percent less than five years ago, according to the calculator of the economic consulting company "Cekos In", which works by comparing inflation in given periods. The average pension in Serbia, after the December increase of 10,9 percent, is slightly more than 50.000 dinars. However, out of a total of 1,65 million pensioners in Serbia, more than 60 percent of them receive a pension that is below the national average, often on the border of the risk of poverty.

According to Demostat data, 27.000 of the oldest citizens receive the minimum pension, which amounts to about 140.000 dinars and leads to a life below the poverty threshold, while another 300.000 people receive a smaller amount. These are mainly family and disability pensions, but also agricultural pensions, which amount to around 21.000 dinars for the whole month. "Not only is the country in an economic crisis, but pensioners are making ends meet when they go to the store because of the numerous set high prices in large stores," adds Grabundžija. "It's serious combinatorics to fill the fridge for the whole month, and that's really humiliating for people who have had a nice and responsible job their whole life."

TIRED, BUT ALSO BY CHOICE

Snežan certainly has energy, knowledge about hiking and the will for political change. As she walked, she offered the students numerous tips as she is an experienced hiker. On the way to Novi Sad, the only thing that hindered her from supporting the students was that she was carrying a heavy backpack on the first day. Some of her younger hiking companions on the same march, she says, had pain and blisters on their soles. However, she has the impression that even those who would "fall down at the rest stops, mostly due to fatigue from bad shoes and those shoes they are wearing now", quickly stood up when the guards announced the movement.

And Crta's research shows that young people have become more active - and politically. Thus, respondents who are up to 29 years old, and who were relatively passive in the last few years, are now significantly more politically involved and interested. The proportion of young people who would go to the polls is significantly higher than a year or two ago.

Snezana is probably not a typical representative of her own generation, in which she does not see the same enthusiasm, but she says that pensioners still want change. "Even though we live very poorly, we pensioners are still slow," he says. "We want to fight for ourselves, but we don't even know how anymore."

Perhaps they are slow to accept changes, the latest figures also show that pensioners would physically move significantly less - to the polling stations. This result speaks of a big difference in the attitude towards the government of the electorate, which is considered one of the most loyal.

"Almost 45 percent of pensioners believe that the country is currently in crisis, but it seems that they are a little tired of the elections, because only about a third stated that new elections are the way for the country to get out of that crisis," says Vojislav Mihailović. That's why he believes that the question is to what extent citizens over 65 would go to new potential elections. Even if they support the government in principle.