Citizens of Serbia are protesting day in and day out due to assembly irregularities and the fact that competent state institutions are pretending to be deaf and dumb. Since Monday (December 18), they have been on the streets every night. In addition to the protests organized by the opposition list "Serbia against violence", students also started to "self-organize" and demonstrate. Apart from Belgrade, protests are also held in other cities.
Last night, a protest was held in Zrenjanin under the slogan "Come out and say stop theft". As the reason for the gathering, the organizers cited "election theft" and "bribing voters" to vote for the Serbian Progressive Party. They supported the protesting students in Beorgad, demanded the release from prison of all those detained for participating in civil protests and called on their fellow citizens to join the large protest at the Teraziska fountain in Belgrade on Saturday, which ProGlas is calling for.
The eleventh protest of the opposition was held last night, and today at 12 o'clock the students announced the beginning of 24-hour blockades, which will begin with a gathering in front of the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government at the intersection between Birčaninova and Knez Miloš.
After the 24-hour blockade, young people will join the big protest that is being organized on Saturday at 12 noon near the Terazije fountain.
Extra-institutional pressure
Associate professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, Dušan Spasojević, told "Vreme" that it seems that this is now the phase in which the opposition, civil society, ProGlas and students are examining the readiness of citizens to take to the streets and try again to exert extra-institutional pressure.
He also states that one part of the problem is certainly the holidays and the festive atmosphere, and another is that the citizens spent the entire spring and summer on the streets, and that this drained the batteries of social activism a little.
"The next few days are very important for how the citizens will react to this rally on Saturday and to what we see slowly happening all over Serbia", Spasojević points out and adds that it is still too early to assess the capacity and readiness of the citizens. to react to the situation.
Comparisons with the nineties
These days, we can often hear comparisons with 1996 and 1997, when there were daily protests over the theft of local elections.
Dušan Spasojević says that there are similarities and differences, but that in both cases it is about election irregularities.
However, in 1996, electoral irregularities were obvious and easily proven, while now it is a matter of "well-founded suspicion" that has yet to be formally proven."
"The second thing is that in 1996 the opposition explicitly defended the election victory, while now it is not clear to us what the election results would be in some fairer and more normal conditions, that is, what is the extent of the theft," explains Spasojević.
The government's attitude towards protests is also different, to what extent force is used and whether repression is used only when they have some kind of excuse or reason, or they will use it every day, which in 1996 only encouraged protests.
"Now the tactic is to let the protests fade away and die out by themselves, as in previous cases," concluded Spasojević.
Youth rebellion
The young people gathered and drafted a concrete demand, and due to its non-fulfillment, they organized blockades on Monday and Wednesday, and announced a new 24-hour blockade on Friday at noon. Until the May protests, as Spasojević states, it was constantly said that the streets were more or less middle generation, highly educated, urban. What is new now is that a group of students and younger activists has appeared.
"I think it takes time for them to get some kind of legitimacy to organize themselves and start influencing their generation to a greater extent", says our interlocutor and adds that we are already seeing it in these protests, but that nothing is built overnight. .
"I don't think that any big student movement can grow out of this now," he concludes, "but what we are seeing now could be the seed of something similar."
