I guess the most expensive ones are waiting for Serbia local elections in election history. The government has launched everything it can - for voting in Sevojno, Kula, Bor and seven other relatively small places.
At the same time, the rebellion seemed to subside, and the interrooms of critics of the government intensified. Where is the rebellion, between optimism and defeatism? That's the headline of the new "Time" which is on newsstands from this Thursday (March 26).
Zoran Pavlović, professor of psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, says that the government portrays its opponents as "Taliban" who are legitimate to beat and arrest. And at the same time, those "Taliban" incite each other.
"The constant repetition of the message that 'protests have failed' (from the mouths of the regime), i.e. that 'there is no hope' (from the mouths of the anti-regime) produces something that looks like learned helplessness: people begin to believe that their involvement (no longer) has no effect, so they withdraw and thereby actually confirm exactly what they began to suspect: they give up because they think they are in the minority, and thus eventually become a minority," says Pavlović.
"This is especially important because the protests in Serbia have already passed the stage of mass mobilization. In such situations, regimes often switch from open repression to a kind of psychological demobilization," he adds for "Vreme".
Expected differences
Dragan Popadić, a professor of social psychology at the same faculty, says that the absence of hope and energy probably exists among excessive optimists who believed that the eruption of discontent and protests would lead to a change of government by itself.
"While the earlier request united the citizens, so all other differences between them faded into insignificance, the request for elections and the preparation for them, by the logic of things, at some point had to bring to light significant differences in political attitudes, and also in the interests of different groups among citizens, students and parties," says Popadić.
"Turning to elections as a goal also gave the authorities an opportunity to activate all their practiced repertoire of creating conflicts and muddying the waters. In short, the situation is complicated, but it is far from defeatism," he adds.
The rebellion is always renewed.
Cultural expert Aleksandra Đurić Bosnić reminds that by producing an endless series of conflicts within the opposition field and by spreading defeatism, the regime managed to suppress protests during the previous 14 years, albeit - only temporarily.
"And here we are talking about the previously seen technique of disorienting, discouraging and subjugating citizens, to the extent that giving them the impression of giving up the fight for a free state, if it is impossible for the ruling hydra to change, seems like a rational choice. For the regime, it is a desirable and planned reaction," she says.
That is why, he says, it is high time that all those who are against the government agree on not attacking each other, and then "neutralize the defeatist passages" directed by the government. "Those who do not do so will be faced with public reaction, in the form of condemnation for lack of responsibility, precisely according to the public interest," she adds.
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