Compromised state and social self-respect

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The key result of the last elections is the extent of electoral irregularities and the extent of unequivocal evidence of irregularities. In other words, there were never any more irregularities, and no evidence of them.

There are two reasons why this happened. First of all, this regime - bearing in mind the consequences of its rule - has lasted too long: what it has done, it is better not to have done, and there is a handful of things that were not done, which should have been done. Hence, in order to compensate for the missing votes, more irregularity was needed. The regime does not want uncertain elections, even less power sharing or different authorities at different levels. Second, the rule that has lasted for more than a decade has introduced the regime into a decadence that can no longer be hidden by anything, and the impression is that it does not even bother to hide it. Because no one really believes in that policy - neither those who represent it, nor those who vote for it, as long as the regime does not have any coherent ideology, but its range of topics changes from one television appearance of the regime's leader to another.

FROM HYBRID TO AUTOCRATIC REGIME

In democratic countries, crises and doubts are resolved in elections. In authoritarian orders, they are a strictly controlled mechanism for the routine renewal of the legitimacy of the existing government. Elections in democratic countries imply uncertainty on election day, as participants can achieve different and previously unknown results. Uncertainty in authoritarian orders begins the moment the elections are over. The fundamental question here is whether the regime will manage to impose its interpretation of events and, through the controlled institutions of the system, legalize obvious electoral irregularities. Serbia is in such a situation after December 17. If - in theory - in the past decade the prevailing opinion was that a hybrid regime was in power in Serbia, after massive intervention in the electoral process, combined with violent elements in the post-election period, there is no longer any doubt that it is an autocratic regime with pronounced elements of a spin dictatorship.

Faced with the post-election crisis, Serbia is proving to be a society with even deeper divisions and more pronounced mistrust. Electoral Serbia is an equation without any known ones. We do not know how many voters there really are in Serbia, how many people have real voting rights, how many imported voters there are, what is the structure of people who voted for the SNS, how many people would vote for the SNS under even normal election conditions. Loaded with such obvious irregularities, the elections leave the impression of a social game, let's call it Monopoly, in which one participant manages the entire process and determines its dominant flows. When elections are called into question as a way of resolving open issues in society, then it sinks into uncertainty and this is a huge responsibility of the government.

That is the moment where the line must be drawn. Compromising the electoral process and drastic electoral irregularities, in addition to complicating social and political circumstances, also compromise the state itself. Therefore, such a process should be opposed not only by political parties, but by citizens regardless of their political beliefs and regardless of who they voted for. Because all citizens who believe in democracy and social stability were harmed in the elections. Pointing out the facts is not the destabilization of the state, but rather the destruction of elections as a social and political mechanism. Electoral irregularities have undermined any sense of the election, and strong suspicions that certain state bodies incited electoral irregularities, facilitated them or even participated in them give special weight.

A QUESTION OF SOCIAL SELF-RESPECT

Fair elections accepted by all are important not only for political reasons, nor only for the necessary social freedoms, they are also important for society as an expression of self-respect. This is a moment in which no one in Serbia can remain on the sidelines and in which it must be decisively said that society does not agree that the elections should not be a process in which the government will be elected and replaced, that democracy is completely meaningless and that it is shown naked the face of autocracy. Any delay in the solution will make the crisis deeper and more dramatic. This raises the issue of responsibility. If this unequivocal interference in the electoral process goes unaccounted for, then nothing will be a social or political precedent.

The government, however, refuses to face the reality that we have a dramatic crisis. The regime threatens the moral foundations of social existence. Nothing is impossible, everything comes into consideration if it fits the interests of narrow circles of political oligarchs, there are no moral and social standards that, if an occasion requires it, cannot be violated. Coping has become the dominant pattern of social behavior. I believe, despite everything, that a significant number of people will not agree that their everyday life is turned into the right of the currently stronger. The power, as always in important moments, is in the number of people who do not agree.

If the elections after 2012 were turned into a factory for the production of default legitimacy of the regime - to which the opposition readily agreed, even though the consequences of those frequent elections were the strengthening of the government and the further reduction of the social space for the opposition - the specificity of these elections consists in the fact that that legitimacy questioned. You cannot invoke legitimacy that has been so documentedly challenged. The dissatisfaction of the opposition with media representation is one thing, the appearance of phantom voters and internal and external migration of voters is quite another.

SPIN AND FEAR

The crisis of legitimacy opens up the issue of internal dissatisfaction, which manifested itself with varying strength after the December 17 election, as well as the issue of international status, since the reports of international election observers have never been so unfavorable before. In what way will the regime now seek to restore legitimacy? One way is to tactic, give in and find a convenient excuse for repeating the elections in Belgrade. The second way is the tightening of relations with the political opposition and emphasized cooperation in international relations, especially in circumstances where geopolitical interests often put the question of political freedom and democracy in a country in the background. The key is whether the regime will produce more confusion in internal politics, which would be completely in the spirit of a spin dictatorship, or whether it will use more repression, which would give the spin dictatorship in which we live one of the characteristic local features, but also fear, as one of the main social feelings, based on the bare foundations of force.

The regime resorts to force when urgent needs arise. This is especially evident in relation to the appearance of a larger number of young people at protests, which the regime is obviously more worried about than classic political demonstrations. The regime arrests young people and threatens them with criminal prosecution, because it is frightened by the appearance of a large number of young people in politics, in civic initiatives and in general in social life during this year. With arrests and threatening accusations of overthrowing the constitutional order, he is trying to intimidate both young people and their parents.

In the 1990s, we had Milosevic, who was an autocrat, but his opponents had the support of the international community. Vučić is predominantly a school model of spin dictatorship. He resorts to absolute control over the media and the economy, creates toxic polarization, shapes internal and external enemies, causes crises to resolve them and to postpone and neutralize important social issues. Despite all this, the government has support from many international addresses, which shows that there are interests that are not on the side of democracy but geopolitics.

The survival of the spin dictatorship directly depends on the volume of spin production and on obtaining the desired public reaction to the produced spins. If spins were to be distinguished from real topics, it would threaten the spin dictatorship.

After the elections, the public in Serbia oscillates between apathy and radicalization, between resignation and anger. Those feelings must be understood, but they are not a good ally in the need to change society, to restore confidence in the electoral process or to resolve the crisis caused by electoral irregularities. It takes persistence. If there is, the government will not be able to replace the lost legitimacy, nor to cover up with silence or propaganda the truth about all too visible electoral irregularities.

The author is a writer and publisher and one of the initiators of ProGlas