Although the meeting in Jagodina was an attempt by SNS to respond to the organic discontent that has been raging throughout the country for months, the image of the Serbian president waving a flag while his supporters were leaving seemed more like a defeat. How has the regime managed to get out of crisis situations so far? And how those mechanisms work in these weeks
Magnificent meeting in Jagodina, where the rebranding was announced again Serbian Progressive Party in the Movement for the People and the State, more than 100.000 people attended, claims Informer editor-in-chief and declared loyalist Dragan J. Vučićević. A little less - about 70.000 - was estimated by the analysts on duty at Pink, who followed the events in Jagodina live from the studio. The archive of public gatherings, an organization that has been evaluating the number of meetings and protests throughout Serbia for years, counted about 14.000 people.
Although on that day a large part of Serbia, at the call of the students, joined the strike and took to the streets - indeed writing the pages of the country's recent history - the topic of the day for the pro-regime media it was exclusively the meeting of Aleksandar Vučić, is reportedly a prelude to a series of rallies by which the government will respond to protests across the country.
For the umpteenth time, the president of Serbia has decided to rise above the dissenters and to show both them and his voters who is stronger. The recipe was probably taken from Slobodan Milošević's book, from which Vučić copied several times already (does "Aco, Srbine" remind you of "Slobo, we love you"). However, this measurement of strength went ingloriously.
Vučić came on stage after an hour's delay, apparently, surprised by the number of people who came to see, hear and touch him. In reality, probably waiting for the small square to really fill up.
In his speech, nothing was said that the President of Serbia does not repeat every day, either in his television appearances - and they are very frequent - or in his addresses via Instagram, which are then, of course, broadcast in prime time. In Jagodina, all of this was said somewhat louder and more energetically, with resolute waving of fists. After that, the president of Serbia took the flag in his hands and frantic waving began. While Vučić waved the Serbian flag on stage, drone footage showed his supporters leaving the rally in rivers.
LOGISTICAL PREPARATIONS
The Jagodina gathering was not Vučić's first counter rally, and it certainly won't be the last, although there is still no announcement about the place and time of the next gathering. After all, this is not a surprise - every previous gathering of progressives required serious logistical preparations. In addition to those who come of their own free will and pro bono, it has been rumored for years that there are others who are there on a work assignment. Progressive officials wholeheartedly deny giving any per diems - understandable, because acknowledging the existence of such would not only call into question the unconditional support of the SNS, but would also open the question of the origin of the money for the per diems.
On the other hand, the story about buses and sandwiches was accepted by the progressives, in an attempt to relativize it and make it meaningless. “Lunch in Davos. A sandwich maker in Belgrade, a sandwich maker in Davos," wrote Vučić in a recent post on his Instagram profile, with an accompanying photo of him holding a sandwich.
Therefore, it takes time and money to prepare buses, sandwiches, rosters, per diems and engage supporters. The chance that the Serbian Progressive Party will organize any rally today for tomorrow, which the students have been doing for months, is zero. This was also seen on the eve of the previous big counter rally of the authorities called "Serbia of Hope". Held in May 2023, it was conceived as a response to the "Serbia against violence" protests, which at that time gathered several tens of thousands of people on the streets of Belgrade. This gathering was not only pompously announced, but the most faithful progressives coordinated on social networks day after day counting down to the gathering, presented in advance as the "biggest".
CONTRASTUDENTS AND OTHER REACTIONS
There were those counter rallies in 2024 as well, and they can serve as a good example of how the authorities act in times of crisis.
In mid-December last year, Vučić held a press conference in the Presidency building, where he announced that all the demands of the students in the blockade will be met. The epilogue of this story is well known - the students gathered in front of the Presidency booed the President of Serbia live on television, in front of an audience of millions.
Was the idea of a meeting with "his" students born in Aleksandar Vučić's head while the crowd gathered at Andrić's wreath sang "Izađi mala" to him? Only two weeks after the president of Serbia was booed, the SNS organized a forum in the Sava Center called "Future, not the past". At the forum, Vučić discussed with young people about loans for cheap apartments and staying in Serbia. To be honest, the conversation resembled a monologue, and the young people present looked more middle-aged than young.
After all, it didn't even matter how purposeful the conversation might have been in such circumstances. It was important to organize it in order to show the majority, decent Serbia, that Vučić, unlike what they may have seen or heard, enjoys the trust of young people. Of course, under strictly controlled conditions, with carefully conducted applause, coordinated fan chanting and without the danger of any "whistlers". The security in front of the Sava Center took care of that, which did not allow the curious to enter. About the fact that the meeting was only for selected "students", he spoke that evening for the N1 student (but real) of the Faculty of Agriculture, Aleksa Dragović, who tried to enter the event with two indexes, but was not allowed to do so. "When they saw my index at the door, they kicked me out." I have two indexes because I study two majors at the Faculty of Agriculture, but it is obvious that I am not welcome", he said then.
Before the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad on November 1, the most serious threat to the Vučić regime was the anti-lithium protests that gripped Serbia after the revival of the "Jadar" project. The government's answer was the Serbian president's lithium tour of Podrinje. There, a sad picture. Vučić as a new-century absolutist versus an ordinary man who came to beg for a few more meters of asphalt to be built in his village, for example.
Like the rally held a few months later in the Sava Center, the same recipe was applied in Podrinje. In theory - a conversation, in reality - a performance, carefully broadcast through all available channels. The goal in both cases is the same: an attempt to present the authorities as open to constructive dialogue, open to criticism and ready to effectively find solutions. In this way, in the eyes of the average viewer of television with a national frequency, those who protest become uncooperative destroyers of the state and oppressors of the honest world.
Protests do not have to be suppressed exclusively by force and beatings. Vučić learned this in July 2020, after, due to the second wave of the corona virus, he announced a three-day curfew in Belgrade. With that, it will turn out a few hours later, he provoked angry citizens to the streets. Just a few weeks earlier, the government declared victory over the epidemic, lifted the emergency measures and set the date for the delayed parliamentary elections on June 21. Information about the "victory over the virus" was also found in the newsletter of the Serbian Progressive Party (number 83, March - April 2020).
The re-radicalization of the measures after holding the elections caused mass demonstrations. At that time, however, the police responded to the protests with beatings, tear gas and cavalry units. Instead of scaring the citizens, the beatings had the opposite effect - the very next day, Vučić announced that there "might not be" a curfew, and the protests continued in the following days.
Although these demonstrations, in the long run, did not bring about any changes, they indicated that the violent suppression of protests can very easily ricochet on the person in charge. Wasn't this confirmed again in November 2024, when the sending of hoodlums, thugs and "concerned citizens" against the students caused a two-month blockade of the faculty and opened a series of government failures from which it, to this day, cannot recover?
(NE)SUCCEEDED "SERBIA OF HOPE"
But it is difficult to talk about Vučić's counter-rallies without referring to the "Serbia of Hope" and "Future of Serbia" rallies. The May 2023 rally in many ways resembles the recent fiasco in Jagodina. Not only did the citizens wait for hours in the rain for the appearance of the President of Serbia, and then splashed in the rivers, but Vučić also spoke on that occasion about the founding of the Movement for the People and the State. "Already for Vidovdan", he promised. Almost two years later, this "suprapolitical movement," as he calls it, still hasn't come out of the announcement phase that's been going on since fall 2022.
That rally, let's recall, was a response to the "Serbia against violence" protests, caused by mass murders in the elementary school "Vladislav Ribnikar" and the villages of Dubona and Malo Orašje. The archive of public gatherings counted around 45.000 people present at the "Serbia of Hope" rally, while the estimated number of demonstrators was around 60.000 at the third "Serbia Against Violence" protest alone. Therefore, the "magnificent" gathering of progressives was not even the largest gathering of that month, let alone in the history of the Serbian capital. According to that parameter, they have been announced for a long time magnificent gathering was magnificent failure.
Nevertheless, I guess it is already clear by now that Aleksandar Vučić is very skilled at creating his own reality, into which he then draws millions of Serbian citizens. Immediately after the rally, Tanjug reported that there were about 200.000 people at Vučić's rally, and the same information was picked up by the tabloids and regime television with lightning speed. This is how this message reached the average voter from the interior. According to this parameter, the "Serbia of Hope" rally fulfilled its purpose in the progressive electorate - it maintained the appearance of sincere mass support. The "Serbia against violence" protests soon began to fall, but the credit for that can be attributed more to the bad moves of the opposition than to the good moves of the government.
The most successful of Vučić's counter rallies were the "Future of Serbia" gatherings, created in response to the months-long "One in Five Million" protests in 2019. Although the content of those rallies did not differ significantly from the other gatherings mentioned in this text, in 2019 the electorate of the ruling party was still not tired to that extent. After that, the only year in which there was no election was 2021. In times of non-stop election campaign, there is no end to election rallies, and for each of them a certain quota must be met. And that, obviously, is becoming more and more difficult.
WHAT'S COOKING IN "MESSAGE BOX"
The rallies are, however, only one of the crisis measures of the Serbian Progressive Party. Certainly, the one that is used when it gets seriously congested. In order for meetings to be as useful as possible, they are always accompanied by appropriate messages. The latest message from the "message box" of the progressives is the "I trust Vučić" campaign, created immediately after another Vučić announcement of a referendum on trusting himself.
A public declaration of loyalty to the President of Serbia is nothing new. For the first time, however, an entire Instagram page was created dedicated to Vučić's works. Before that, SNS officials mostly stuck to individual messages and photos. For example, in January 2023, social networks of progressives were flooded overnight with photos of wolves and the Serbian flag, along with the words: "Always with your president." "Vučić's wolves" were magically created at the start of negotiations between the President of Serbia and Western leaders on Kosovo, which ultimately resulted in Vučić's signing of the Ohrid Agreement. The campaign was clear - Vučić's "wolves" stand by the president and are ready to defend him themselves, if necessary. Two years later, the "wolves" were recycled into "loyalists", but the message remained the same.
All of Vučić's successful crisis campaigns are united by one common thread, and that is the media. Since the beginning of the year, there has not been a day when the image of the President of Serbia did not appear on small screens. According to Istinomer data, Vučić appeared 11 times on cable and television channels with national coverage in 2024 months in 322.
When the editorial policy of all television stations with a national frequency is the work of one man, when the public service is captured, and the messages of tabloids with millions of readers come from one and the same kitchen, the truth falls into the background. A gathering of 10.000 souls becomes a million, non-violent civil and student protests become colored revolutions, and every word uttered in public space is taken out of context with minimal effort.
It seems, however, that circumstances are changing. Although Vučić persistently claims that support for the Serbian Progressive Party is growing - the progressives' inconsistent "message box" indicates that the government is failing to find a cure for the growing dissatisfaction. This was also seen in Vučić's address on Monday, when, while the prime minister and the speaker of the parliament were standing next to him, he again declared the students' demands met.
Later, he told the students to invite him to a game of chess, even though he knew very well that the game was well underway.
If the main act of government in times of serious crises are counter rallies, the intermezzo period has so far been filled with one-time distributions of money, salary increases in the public sector, student and pensioner cards or lists of support for President Vučić.
The latest list of support is a kind of "Petition in support of the right to life of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić", which was launched by a certain Institute for Political Networking. In 2021, the same organization collected signatures to defend the reputation of the president "against the media war waged against him by political and interest groups in the country and the environment and the media under their control", and its leader is Aleksandar Đurđev, a man close to the Serbian Progressive Party. .
The petition in support of the right to life of Aleksandar Vučić gathered 46 signatures. Among them are four ministers - Ivica Dačić, Milan Krkobabić, Maja Popović and Dejan Ristić. There is also the President of the National Assembly Ana Brnabić, and the list includes, among others, the President of Free Montenegro Vladislav Dajković, the editor of "Politika" Bojan Bilbija, the media expert Nebojša Krstić and the candidate for the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) Dejan Vuk Stanković .
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.
Who mentions the extraordinary elections when the rating of the party in power is falling, and according to all surveys, Vučić is not the most important political factor in the country, but the students?
The brutal beating of students and citizens in Novi Sad shows that the regime is not only ready to take revenge - it is actually carrying it out
If in reality the principle of balance is violated - the way the incompetent regime violated the relationship between the concrete elements at the Novi Sad Railway Station - reality will behave like a canopy: it will fail to obey
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