Vučić's pumping into a punctured balloon

Srbija (bez KiM)

28. avgust – 8. septembar 2025.

istraživanje telefonsko, reprezentativni uzorak

ispitanika: 1050

Afterwards, we will explain it, contextualize it and relativize it to a certain extent. But the basic finding of September research, and what could be seen and felt as early as June and July, is that the regime (temporarily?!) stabilized and that during the summer months the downward trend of its rating - but there was even a certain consolidation.

After all, you don't even need research. If we are at all realistic and honest with ourselves, the decline of energy can be seen with the naked eye both in a qualitative and in a qualitative sense, both on the political and symbolic level. Therefore, when I said in the previous months that, since mid-March, "we are not stewing him, but he has been stewing us for years", it was not just a joking allusion to culinary quips Jove Bakić, but a warning and a bitter reminder of our social and political reality under the regime Aleksandar Vučić.

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Vučić's idea with "Caciland" and "to students who want to learn" (actually, a handful of younger SNS activists) was bizarre, transparent and comical. Just like his obsessive desire to produce his own "bikers", "veterans" and "tractors" after he had started with "students". Well, in the end, his "blockaders against blockades". But, little by little, step by step, he managed to "normalize" that bizarreness, like almost all others, while the resistance to that abnormality slipped into disorganized anger and gradually evolved into resignation.

Let's just compare the current situation and atmosphere with that of six months ago, when Vučić and his people "loyalists" throughout Serbia they were literally not allowed to turn their noses up, and the few rallies they organized with difficulty in Jagodina, Sremska Mitrovica and Belgrade were very poor and had the opposite effect (that's why that format was abandoned). In contrast, opposition (because everything against the government is opposition), student and civil protests exuded confidence, strength and unity of action - which are now absent or can hardly be found in forensic traces.

In fact, apart from the mentioned "normalization of the abnormal", Vučić's greatest success in the past half-year period is that he managed to move from the vision of a "rebellious society against the regime" to the image (and reality) of a divided and "torn" society. And yet, collaterally (so to speak, an "extra-bonus"), to a large extent, he succeeded in putting controversy in the focus of his opponents, instead of himself and his disastrous rule.opposition-citizens-students”.

FROM THE READY, VERESIA

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All this does not mean that it is "the end", nor that Vučić "defeated the colored revolution", because, to begin with, there was no "colored revolution". There was only a massive eruption of anger that tried after the fall of the canopy at the Railway Station in Novi Sad, and especially after the initial rude reactions of the authorities to get out of the matter on the principle of "neither ate the onion, nor smelled the onion".

Vučić did not win because, unlike some earlier cases, the protest did not die down and there remains a latent threat, or the possibility of its rekindling. And he did not win because, despite the hard work of his propagandists to prove the opposite, his rating still did not return to the former level, not to mention the "historic" and "never greater" support and similar fairy tales.

But he did manage to, in chess terms, get out of checkmate and turn an almost lost game into a positional game with a still relatively uncertain outcome. Now, retroactively, we can also think about whether that winter and March threat was really "murky" or it only seemed that way. And if it was serious, does that mean that adequate and strongest steps were not taken in the meantime?

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Therefore, it was not just a matter of "summer break", "heat" and "exam deadlines", as the over-enthusiastic analysts, activists and revolutionaries from social networks consoled themselves. Not counting the Vidovdan exception, after the March culmination, the protests are generally in a greater or lesser crisis and decline. This is to some extent expected, partly due to the natural "fatigue of the material", and partly due to the increasingly obvious wandering and confusion about the direction in which the protests should continue. But even if the phenomenon was expected, one should not turn a blind eye to it.

On these pages, we have already talked about the harmfulness of quasi-motivational mantras such as "It's ready, they just haven't told him yet" and the like. It is good to believe and spread optimism. But it is bad for the general cause, even disastrous, when too great a gap appears between the increasingly warlike "revolutionary" rhetoric and the ever weaker and more problematic echoes and effects of those announcements and proclamations.

WHO ARE THE FIGHTERS?, And WHO "THE ENEMY"

I personally think that this year's incidents, the attacks on the SNS premises and the insistence on the total blockade of the faculty (for which, at that moment, there was no majority support either among the professors or among the students), no matter how much they may have raised adrenaline at the moment and were "televised" for live coverage, were essentially harmful and counterproductive from the point of view of the fight for regime change, because Vučić used that scene to present himself to external factors as a "victim" and a "factor of stability". I know that, of course, it is possible to look at this matter differently, but something must definitely change because, whether we like it or not, society is not only made up of "cats" and "Che Guevara".

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Does this mean that we should give up on protests and focus only on preparing for the elections, which, sooner or later, will inevitably come? No. We should not, of course, give up on protests, among other things, as a way to get to the elections in general, as well as to hold them in the best possible, or at least tolerable, election conditions. But those protests should be a demonstration of determination and strength, as they were in the December-March period, and not of weakness, exhaustion and frustration. Therefore, I believe that instead of daily fruitless blockades and chaotic running with the police, a reset to peaceful and massive, but periodic gatherings is needed, which would demonstrate the harmony, determination and perseverance of the anti-regime front. And that "front" must really be a front, not in a military sense, but in a political-organizational, operational and psychological sense. And above all else, it must definitively and clearly distinguish and demarcate - who is the "enemy" (i.e. opponent), and who are comrades and allies. Intuitively, this is clear to all of us, but as soon as they scratch a little under the surface, almost all possible doubts and doubts about everything and everyone pop up. While on the "other" ie. the opposite side has absolutely no such doubts and dilemmas - and it is hers, i.e. its enormous advantage, even independent of the otherwise enormous advantage in logistics and resources.

photo: marko dragoslavić / fonet

MORE OPPONENTS THAN SUPPORTERS OF THE REGIME

The government, of course, will not be satisfied (and should not be) with these findings of ours, because according to them there are still significantly (ten percent) more opponents than supporters of the regime, and because the numerical indicators of their recovery are minimal and mostly within the limits of statistical error. Besides, they, of course, never even admitted that they were in any kind of problem or decline, to now rejoice in the symptoms of a slight recovery.

By the way, there is one extremely unusual, but quite reliable indicator that can be read from Vučić's gestures and statements. When he is in the worst crisis, when hundreds of thousands of angry demonstrators are rolling on the street and under his window, when the rating is at the ceiling, and the closest associates barely answer the phone, he feigns madness and screams that he is "stronger than ever". And when the tsunami passes, when the protests blow out, the holes are patched, and the rating consolidates, then he starts to overextend himself, saying that "everything is uncertain", how "they are strong, and he is weak - but he will fight", etc. And now he is right on the threshold of that second phase again.

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However, objectively speaking, everything is uncertain. Still, as we said, there are more people who are against than for the government. And still, with all the regime's "pumping", there is no majority support for Vučić's flagship projects (with Expo and the "national stadium" at the forefront). After all, if he was really sure of his numbers and the findings of his "infallible" agencies and focus groups, he would call elections as early as this summer or in the days ahead.

THE BALLOON IS PUNCTURED, ALI...

Finally, while we are dealing extensively here with whether or not the ruling bloc grew by one percent, we have the phenomenon of the "student list" which, so to speak, has grown by 4-5 percent in two months (and since May, when we first put it on offer, by even more than eight percent), which seems to justify the unusual decision of its creators not to go public with the names on it yet. Unfortunately, that growth came almost entirely from the accounts of already opposition-leaning voters, and not at the expense of abstainers or, possibly, those "softer" pro-regime supporters - which was the hope, that is, the danger that Vučić, with his aggressive, theatrical and, for our eyes, often absurd and tragicomic performances and actions (from "Caciland" to these current "protests against blockades") largely remedied and blocked. (Not to mention the fact that support for student protests and actions is no longer nearly as plebiscitary as it was in the moments when the movement was at its peak.)

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Let's conclude with two equally accurate, but very different-sounding statements. Under one, "us" is still more. Under two, exactly, but with all the students (very diverse among themselves), left and right opposition, pro-Europeans and pro-Brixists, real and fake sovereignists, those who are "against the government, but still don't know for whom", Nestorović and "sky flyers" of all colors - which is a group that even God himself could not (and should not) assemble into one whole. And since, when you put them side by side, realistically speaking, it doesn't really seem too optimistic, here, at the end, is a really encouraging moment.

In the past 5-6 months, opponents of the regime made almost all possible mistakes, while Vučić threw and burned literally all possible and impossible cards and trump cards - repression, blackmail, fines, cheapening, raises, legalization, military parade, Putin, Xi, Dodik, Ursula and Rubio - and he only managed to stop or slow down the attrition.

I mean, the ratings can go up and down a bit, but that bubble is definitely punctured and only holds with the constant and increasing pumping of new air, energy and resources - which are not unlimited on that side either.

The author is the editor-in-chief of NSPM

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