Holy week

Everything is happening. However, this Sunday there is only one event - the big Saturday protest in Belgrade. Tension and anticipation are growing day by day, rumors and expectations are spreading.

Popular discontent flares up. His expression is legal and legitimate. Both on the streets of Novi Sad, Kragujevac and Niš, as well as in Belgrade.

The intrusion of demonstrators into the National Assembly on October 2000, XNUMX in a cloud of tear gas was not anyone's goal. Quite simply, Slobodan Milošević and his regime refused to admit electoral defeat - the popular revolt had to find expression.

The situation in Serbia today differs in many respects from the one whose quarter century will be marked this year.

Even then, young people were in the foreground through "Otpor", but they did not represent the initiators, soul, heart and brain of the popular protest like the current rebellious students. The difference is also in the position of Serbia. In the fall of 2000, the country was ostracized from the international community, and Milošević was wanted by the Hague Tribunal. Today, it is not the same case - due to authoritarian inaction, Vučić is not even called out by the European Union, let alone Trump's America and Putin's Russia.

That's not all. Even 25 years ago, the opposition was fragmented and divided, but in Đinđić and Koštunica, it had strong leaders with unquestionable authority. But not to list any further - Serbia in 2000 was a country on the brink of existence, defeated in wars it was not allowed to fight, bombed, under economic sanctions... In March 2025, life in the country is incomparably better than then, it earns more, spends and the like. But viewed even from afar, there is no mention of any "leadership in the region", "golden age" and similar Vučić outbursts.

So what's the problem? Why is Holy Saturday, March 15, expected with so much hope or fear?

Here it is worth recalling the similarities between pre-October 5th and current Serbia. Then and now, everything was decided by one man, and the institutions danced as they were told. For a long time, no one trusted either of them, they gave in only when they were forced to do so, they surrounded themselves with poltroons and incompetents, they poisoned political and social life with lies, plots and conspiracy theories, they declared opponents as enemies and traitors, they completely assumed the public interest to be their own.

The first deafened everyone with a thunderous, pharaonic silence, the second with an unparalleled roar.

But on the other hand, there are many other things. The bottom line is that the citizens of 2025 recognized Milošević as a man who stands on the way to a better future for the country and each of them individually. This is exactly what the people are saying to Vučić today with their massive arrival in Belgrade on March 15.

But - how will Holy Saturday pass?

That depends solely on Vučić. After each of his tours in Serbia with paid clappers and banner bearers, the protest spread; after every announcement that the "colored revolution" was about to collapse, more people took to the streets; after promising to "end" the protests on Saturday, he seems like a man who has lost touch with reality.

In short, Vučić's empty speeches and "conversations with the people" suffered a magnificent fiasco. Even ordinary progressives ask if he has anyone around him to give him at least a little advice.

Vučić is no longer able to hide the nervousness and intimidation in his own ranks. An even bigger problem for him is that the image he has been building for more than a decade as an omnipotent leader, an infallible politician-chess player, the best connoisseur of Serbs and Serbia and a master of everything - from lace to kachamak, is an even bigger problem.

After the winter of 2025, a huge number of protesters on Saturday shows that all his efforts are in vain and reduces him to the right measure. And that means - to an ordinary politician and manipulator.

Still with great power in his hands, it is difficult for Vučić to accept his own image in the mirror of the public. One must be honest and admit that he did as much as he could to beautify it: he launched the Law on Higher Education, arrested low-level and middle-level corruptors from his ranks, overthrew the government...

It's too little too late, but beyond this he is not a staff. Because if he did, instead of visiting Kovačica or Alibunar, he would use the fall of Miloš Vučević to resolve this situation by forming a transitional government with one single and clear task - organizing fair and honest elections.

But then he would no longer be the old Vučić. That is why the protest on Saturday feels like an indescribable pressure. He wants to show both supporters, opponents and the entire public that he is still the same, a man on whom everything depends.

But it's in vain for him to "catch", possible blockades of access roads or attempts to provoke riots. Vučić is already a loser. The mass of students and citizens on the streets of Belgrade on March 15 will clearly show him that.

However, nothing is finished with that. The real job is dismantling the progressive regime. The way this will be done is in Vucic's hands. It can be one way or another, but one thing is certain - those days are coming.