At the end of March they local elections in nine environments and everyone is already doing their job - students the opposition is also fighting, and the government is preparing to steal. That is the title of the new issue of "Vremena", which is on newsstands from this Thursday (February 26).
In the editorial, Philip Schwarm demolishes the myth of "regime consolidation" and notes the nervousness and attack on some of the last free media:
"Except for the hardest part of the voters, the government's propaganda has started to slip in the place. If a citizen - regardless of the fact that he voted for Vuฤiฤ so many times - wants to find out what is happening in the country, he will not be able to do so on the regime's media. On the contrary, he will realize that what he sees on the screen does not correspond to what he looks out the window."
To be or not to be
In the article by Nedim Sejdinoviฤ, we examine the situation before the local elections, from Bor to Lucan: "For the progressives, these elections are of great importance, their popularity has declined, it is necessary to make up for it, to show that they the people still want", he writes.
"There is no doubt that bags of money, megawatts of energy and the broadest strata of racketeering will be engaged for this purpose. It will probably be even fiercer than last year in Kosjeriฤ. And what will the opposition - both this party and the student movement - do against SNS and how?"
How is everything set up?
In the second article, we deal with all the ways of rigging the election - from clamping down on the media, through the "asphalting festival" before the vote, to pressure on employees in public companies.
"Data from the social protection system is also misused, so even the most vulnerable are blackmailed - and there are, unfortunately, many such cases in this country. We have recorded cases where health care for the most seriously ill was subject to electioneering," Vukosava Crnjanski from Crta told us.
Slobodan Orloviฤ, a professor at the Faculty of Law in Novi Sad, says that despite everything mentioned, we should expect even more blatant violence, because this is the path taken by every similar regime. And what can be done against that?
"For the healing of the electoral process in Serbia at all levels, which according to the democratic diagnosis has been in the terminal phase for a long time, but is still surviving, there is no other remedy than massiveness"; he tells "Vreme".
"Citizens who are not interested in politics, (zoon) idiotes, must wake up from their social coma and vote. If that happens, it will be against the rulers."
Find all these articles and comments in the new "Vremen" on newsstands. Or subscribe now to printed or digital edition.
