Like almost all candidates for deputies Student lists, Slobodan Bubnjević never dreamed that he would be involved in politics. And like most of those chosen by the students to represent them, he has already started the fight against corruption and the arrogance of this regime in its local environment, in its collective, its own citizens' assembly in Pancevo, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.
In addition to expertise, the fact that they engaged in the clash with the progressive autocratic government of their own free will, on their own initiative, without parties, without the support of businessmen or foreign sponsors, without any benefit for themselves, was one of the criteria of the Student Movement.
Bubnjević (1978) is a graduate physicist, employed at the Institute of Physics in Belgrade. He graduated from the Faculty of Physics in Belgrade and was an associate of the Research Station Friday. He dedicated his professional career to the communication of science and has been working as a science journalist since 2003, when he became a member of the editorial staff of the weekly "Vreme". He wrote the popular book "Alchemy of the Bomb" about the history of the nuclear age, several books of prose and nine radio dramas. He received the "Borislav Pekić" award and is a member of the Serbian Literary Society.
Now he subordinated all his energy to the goal of "Students winning", because, he believes, that means Serbia is winning. He firmly believes that it is not only possible, but an inevitability that will finally change the country for the better. They believe that what seems impossible is actually very possible, drawing from the comprehensive program of the Student List.
"No political organization in Serbian history has ever had such an elaborate and comprehensive program as the one developed by the Student Movement," says Bubnjević.
Well, what is it like? in short, that famous Student List program?
Citizens have already seen it, and many of them signed the Student Plan as part of the campaign on the streets, which is based on three key words: justice, knowledge, development. The plan includes eleven specific and interrelated points that must be done immediately in order for our Republic to survive after being occupied by an evil the likes of which our forefathers have not seen and which posterity should never experience.
Personally, I see this plan as a kind of medical protocol, as a series of procedures that will keep a patient in a pre-infarction state, whose body is being eaten away by the disease of corruption, alive and back on his feet.
Through apparently diverse, but tried and tested measures such as prosecutorial police, tax control of property, lustration, release of the media, but also investments in knowledge, housing, doctors in every village and the abolition of dependence on fixed-term contracts, the mechanisms by which corruption is now destroying society through blackmail, addiction and theft are unraveled, institutions are simultaneously freed and the "captured state" is returned to the citizens.
The student plan is the backbone of the program that will restore justice to Serbia, enable a society based on knowledge and create basic conditions for further development.
Everyone understands that it cannot be easily achieved, that the struggle for these values will be long and full of challenges, both external and internal, but the power of the Student Movement is constantly underestimated - didn't it seem completely impossible just a while ago to shake a regime that has so many financial resources, foreign support and a security apparatus?
One of the most bizarre things in the regime's dishonest campaign is when the supposed analysts, and with them the army of bots, who live only on that one program "how good am I at it", criticize the students for not having a program. If we think about it, it is a rhetorical instrument that they are taught in training because no one expects the other side to have a program for citizens, so they attack the Student List in the same way.
We simply have a political system where for decades public life has been just some form of political trade and where actors who advocate any program, even the weakest, are rare. The irony, however, is that with this practice they hit the hardest part of this fight.
Last year, at the invitation of the students, I had the opportunity to participate in the work of one of dozens of working groups that included our best experts and worked on different branches of the program. To give you a sense of the scope of the overall plan, I can say that only our working group produced a detailed action plan on 218 pages, with dozens and dozens of concrete, carefully thought out measures. And that is only one of the areas, only a fragment of the student program that will make Serbia a country of free people.
What is the profile of the people on the Student List?
I have never been involved in politics, like most citizens, I look at that profession with anxiety and a kind of disgust, so as a form of prevention, since the Student List was published, I tell myself several times every day that I hope to be worthy of the students' trust.
As, day by day, I discover and get to know who the other faces on the Student List are, I increasingly realize that the challenge is quite the opposite - in such an extraordinary society, not that I should not spoil myself, but, in order to be worthy, I will have to be more persistent, stronger and wiser than I have ever been before.
Due to the nature of my work to write about science, I am fortunate to know many researchers, professors and experts in various fields, so I knew some of the candidates well before the students asked me if I would join the list. Their names told me that the students choose people who are highly skilled, extremely valued, even loved in their communities and what the regime in its banality completely underestimates - many people of above-average intelligence, capable of solving unexpected problems.
However, as the citizens well know, the students are certainly far smarter than the regime, and also more daring, but it is obvious that politics also requires some other qualities, so starting from the small sample I know, I wondered how it would all look. And then it happened that I participated in a technical meeting where I spent time with a slightly larger group, which is only a part of the 250 candidates, but the picture of the Student List was completely complete for me. Until then, I saw individual trees, and then the forest appeared and I could see what distinguishes the Student List.
Namely, if you go through it, in addition to knowledge and integrity, you will also notice that each member of the list is already in some kind of struggle, in their collective, choir, city, wider community. Candidates of the Student List have long worked to reduce the consequences of corruption and arrogance of the regime, but they did it alone, only with their associates and friends. Some have succeeded in this, some are still fighting, but they entered each of those battles of their own free will, on their own initiative, without parties, businessmen or foreign sponsors, without any benefit for themselves. Long before the students invited them, the candidates made those big decisions - whether they are ready to sacrifice themselves, their comfort and positions. The candidates are different people, but all of them have experienced the dark side of this system.
As a group, they know very well, from below, from personal experience, his passions and flaws, his weaknesses and strengths, his evil ways, his nature. You can underestimate the student candidates because, well, they are honest and educated, so as they say, naive, but they know the system better than any politician.
And that's how they will defeat him - with knowledge.
Photo: Relja JarkovaćkiSlobodan Bubnjević at the protest
What will the election campaign look like?
Even before the elections were called, it was amusing to me how the regime itself defined its own downfall, so even though it is losing the initiative and retreats every day in front of students and citizens, it itself defined the backbone of the student campaign with its slogan "Serbia wins".
It's not that the citizens, even before the unfortunates in power wrote down millions of euros on billboards and graffiti, were quite clear that they were not Serbia, but what the said Serbia was going to do.
From a technical point of view, students have organized themselves both horizontally and vertically, they are networked with choirs, various citizen organizations, they go door to door, an incredible apparatus has been mobilized on a voluntary basis, and an army of controllers whose training has not been seen in the history of European parliamentarism is being prepared.
But it all works without money, without foreign forces, without televisions and billboards, because this is a larger social phenomenon, a general popular self-defense against evil.
It is no wonder that analysts are confused and that this phase of our history will later be an interesting case for understanding the real mechanisms of democracy and the behavior of society. But, if you can't measure something, the problem is not in that, but in the device you use to measure. It just happens.
You can try to find a clever precedent, say how it doesn't work, you can haggle, but it's like trying to calculate how to stay dry on the shore while a tsunami approaches from offshore.
The image of the campaign and its interpretation are those viral videos where tabloid televisions say something about the protest, and then a man turns his phone and shows how it looks from the terrace. In reality, on the street, it is more than clear that the whole country is seething by itself and that the citizens themselves have risen up in a thousand unimaginable ways.
In short, the regime stole Serbia's legitimacy and now she is personally campaigning for students.
Do you expect to win?
No, I don't expect it. Like the absolute majority of citizens of the Republic of Serbia, I know that. It is an obvious inevitability that all political actors see, including the government itself. It is a certain doubt only for those who are still kept by the regime in the tabloid bubble of its falsehoods. It is a historical inevitability. Students win.
Do you have a plan if the regime does not admit defeat?
Da
Do you have candidates for Prime Minister and members of the Government?
I can answer this impossible question imprecisely, but correctly. One of the important values that we rarely return to, and which has characterized the Student Movement from the beginning, is constitutional patriotism.
The Constitution says that every citizen of the Republic of Serbia can vote and can be elected, so it will be one of them. Maybe one of my fellow journalists thinks it's naive, that we need exclusive news right now even if it's unreliable, but I really think that the message about the availability of public office is an important thing, that the replaceability and responsibility of the future Prime Minister, as one among the citizens of the Republic, are far more important than his specific name.
I know, of course, that the media will continue to ask for the name. And they should continue, without a media that freely asks, there is no free society. So, in the meantime, here's an old news story on the subject. I know which name will definitely not be the prime minister. You know too. His name is the past.
Real journalism costs money, and we will not be bought by tycoons and corporations. Support us with a one-time or monthly donation. The time for it is now!
