One of the skills in Aikido is to use your opponent's strength to more easily throw him to the mat. Since they stepped into the world of adults and offered to solve what we couldn't, students with impressive organization, inventiveness and wit, they say that they are determined not to wait for changes. They bring them. It started with demands to expose the mechanisms of corruption, systemic thievery and greed that is corroding the country.
Progressive government it is authoritarian, populist, conservative and nationalist, but the motive of its gathering is not ideology but money. Aleksandar Vučić hides corruption and offers stability on which to build an image that has little to do with everyday life. Many, unfortunately, are ready to buy it without thinking how much they have been robbed.
Those people need to be sobered up. To tell them that without stealing, their leaders would not have foreign bank accounts, expensive apartments, cars, watches and wardrobes, their exclusive places where they drink, snuff and orgy. We all pay for it.
Are we really that stupid? That is why it is necessary to strike in the main direction of the front. The fight against corruption can have the greatest resonance and undivided support among disaffected voters and can be the most effective amalgam for defeating kleptocrats.
Neither Kosovo, nor the EU, nor Russia, nor Expo27, nor the genocide in Srebrenica have such gathering potential. These are all topics that divide and through which the regime tries to drill the resistance movement. Corruption is a cancer that corrodes the electorate of the government and the opposition alike, pro-Western liberals and pro-Russian nationalists, believers and atheists, urban and rural, young and old, educated and semi-literate...
It may sound populist, but according to the experiences of aikido, the strength of thieves should be used to bring them down. In a bad time, when the government conspiratorially brings to the surface cracks in the national movement for regime change, unity should be preserved. No wastage. No one can say anything against the slogan "Enough corruption".
HUNGARIAN SCENARIO
Over the course of 14 years, SNS turned into a corporation that built its political and financial power on top-to-bottom pyramidal corruption. The system is elaborated capillaryly and includes a significant number of those who vote for the progressives not because of the idea - because there is none - but solely for personal benefit. A large number of those voters do not have the opportunity to participate in the distribution of the bribe cake, which means that they are victims of corruption as well as those who do not support the government.
Recently, history took place in Hungary, when voters overthrew Viktor Orbán after 16 years, rejecting his authoritarian politics, thus dealing a blow to the global extreme right that he inspired. Orbán has easily won the last three election cycles. He modeled the country according to his own conservative and nationalist visions, and enabled the elite members of the ruling Fidesz party to get enormously rich through systemic corruption.
Peter the Hungarian recognized the capital that was being offered to him. He understood that populism must be fought populistically. He played on criticism of the mafia state and pointed to a ring of corrupt leaders who steal your money. With that message, delivered in a distinctly patriotic tone, he visited cities, towns and villages. It mixed romanticized reminders of the 1848 revolution and Christian values, but the focus was on the "inhumane" mafia in power.
The Hungarians have had enough. Especially the young and urban generation. They understood that, if this continues, Hungary will be less and less a member of the EU and NATO and will become a country from which they should move out. Some of the elders who were with Orban in the eighties, when he led the liberal revolution against communism, were also mobilized, but they can no longer watch the brazen robbery. Local magnates denied people money for public projects. People experience theft very personally.
Hungarians are very patriotic, and they often know how to be nationalists, but young people repeat that they will not go to Berlin or Paris, that they want to live in Budapest. They love their country, its history, culture and language. There was a lot of uncertainty, politicized emotions, hidden hopes. The tension then turned into hope. We can win.
The defeat of a close associate of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vučić strongly echoed in Serbia, where the government boasted of the historically best ties between two countries that have been more often at odds than bound by the same history.
Can history repeat itself in Serbia and voters overthrow the autocratic Vučić government after more than a decade? Could focusing on the fight against corruption, as synonymous with that government, be the trigger for change? The answer is unequivocal - yes.
OUR CASE
Everything heard in Hungary is a copy-paste version of what has been loudly heard in the streets and squares of Serbia for a year and a half. The same young generation revolted in Serbia against the local government, which in many ways is a copy of Orban's. Vučić copied entire pages from Orban's scripts about "illiberal democracy".
Many young people in Serbia, who spent most of their lives under progressives, think like their Hungarian peers. When the protests started, they demanded investigations into corruption and determination of responsibility, demanded that the institutions do their job and said that they would not build other people's countries but their own, in which people live normally.
Does the young generation in Serbia have a perspective if the progressives win once again? The answer is conclusively - no. Many are ready to pack their bags if the rule is extended, which is rapidly turning Serbia into an increasingly isolated pariah-state that is a threat to the region, and there are no reliable allies in the world.
Dissatisfaction with corruption is not the exclusive property of young people. Even the elderly are over the head of arrogant kabadahs who think that by giving crumbs they can buy social peace or punish those who are not ready to submit.
There is only one rallying point: opposition to a system steeped in corruption. There are no left and right attitudes, pro-Western or pro-Eastern emotions around it.
Today, the progressive regime can only be changed by the student movement and citizens as its allies, and that by advocating an ideologically neutral policy. There is no declaration for or against the EU, regarding Kosovo, relations with neighbors and other divisive topics.
I'm afraid I'm late with this appeal. We have yet to see what will be the consequences of the student memorandum on Kosovo and Metohija, which seems to have been written by Dobrica Ćosić. If that text is not an attempt to steal votes from the progressives, then it is a disaster.
Perhaps this pragmatism sounds crudely simplified, but everything else hinders the achievement of the key goal and threatens to create divisions within the student movement, between students and the opposition, within the opposition.
The upcoming elections will not be fair, free and democratic, elections where it would be normal to oppose ideologies and different political programs. All strength and energy must be concentrated against the mafia regime, which can only be overthrown by a greater number of votes in the ballot box. Those who are not aware of this have either strayed into politics, or their intentions are questionable.
Let the students present the fight against corruption as their trademark, the thing that will protect them from internal divisions and external manipulations. Who will dare to call them "Ustasha" because of their noble struggle?
All opposition parties, left or right, pro-European or distinctly national, mention the fight against corruption in parts of their impoverished programs. Here is their opportunity to join the students, who started their struggle a year and a half ago with demands to investigate the corruption embedded in the foundation of the Novi Sad canopy.
There is no getting around the student-led line. The arguments that there are those who would not vote for the student list and would support the opposition candidates sound loose. Perhaps there are some, but their unwillingness to vote for the original protest but for its faded copy only confirms the short-sightedness of reasoning and dogmatic consciousness.
No time to waste. Even before Peter Magjar, the students designed the "from village to village" campaign. People need to be told how much money someone is stealing from them. They should be made to itch their pockets.
DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??
Vučić recognized the dangers that threatened him. Populistly using the famous phrase "Do you know who I am?", he announces a showdown with proud and arrogant individuals, including "mangupas from our ranks".
He did not mention corruption, but it was somehow implied, since corruption is the culprit that in 2025 Serbia fell to the bottom of the table among the former republics of Yugoslavia for the first time and is considered the biggest problem of society. The demagogic pre-election opposition to systemic corruption will end up as a victim of some local pawn, but with media support, the effects should not be ignored. That is why Vučić should not be allowed to preempt and steal a serious trump card of the social struggle.
This is not the time for campaigns emphasizing the arguments against. Criticism of everything Vučić does had no effect. He cleans them like dandruff from a lapel. Slogan "Students win!" it is a charming message of optimism, but insufficient to achieve victory. Stronger mobilization is needed.
It should be explained to the voters how the corruption gathered around the president's cult of personality got into their pockets, how they are doing everything to stay in power and, if they succeed, how much it will cost the ordinary citizen.
It's time for a referendum. Everyone repeats that, and then they find their own "but". There is no but. Whoever does not join one front is a saboteur by calculation or a saboteur by negligence. All the same, he works for the government, which sees disunity as its chance.
Students and the opposition of Serbia, come to your senses, otherwise it will be bad news for all of us. The fight against corruption is the broadest possible rallying front to defeat the kleptocratic octopus.
All this takes a long time, but all authoritarian regimes lose credibility gradually, and then fall suddenly.
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