Porous defense and the last days

Burnt book on two and a half letters, this is how the personnel deck of the Serbian Progressive Party looks these weeks. Aces are nothing. Out of 700000 members, hardly a few are standing at the booth. "Conversations with the people" are increasingly being held indoors, and the halls are shrinking as if in a magic trick. Of the 17000 loyalists, a handful of directors and employees of state-owned enterprises, councilors and other public officials remained to appear as whippersnappers - evil tongues would say that the process is finally complete because this is where they may have started their political and professional careers. Of the number of signatories of various lists "for the president" and public figures who expressed their loyalty to him, in Ćaciland there are mostly Džeže extras; when they find one student, he becomes, so to speak, second to Vučić. In the regime's media and press, there are a dozen sad faces - Šešelj, Bokan, Krstić... Well, all around.

A few days ago, the President of Serbia announced consultations on the formation of a new government. It is said that they are looking for an expert who would reach the ministerial (or even prime ministerial) position, but that the profession - the one that has even a shred of integrity - runs away from the chair like the devil from the cross. Then, the announced "biggest gathering in the history of Serbia" was unnecessarily postponed.

"It doesn't matter how expensive it will be," said the first man in the country modestly, without even an "s" remaining from the superlative.

It is still said that the gatherers of the poor who will attend the rally of the authorities are sweating profusely to fulfill the quotas ordered to them. And in the Movement for the People and the State, from September 2022 until today, an initiative committee of ten "founding fathers" was established.

THE REGIME FELL ON ĆACILEND AND THE FOLLOWING CORDON

For Ivan Stanojević, assistant professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Belgrade, the personnel problems of the ruling party can be viewed through the prism of rational choice. While things were going as they should, SNS members were carrying out their party activities.

"However, not all of them participated in the huge corruption when it comes to the reconstruction of the Railway Station in Novi Sad, they didn't burn themselves there, they didn't screw up at work, so they didn't even contribute to the death of 16 people. Now the regime would put them on the sidelines against angry fellow citizens, and people are rational enough not to be in that fire," believes Stanojević.

Although this is not the first time that people have died due to the wrong moves of the authorities, the interlocutor of "Vremen" emphasizes that this time the situation was completely naked - people died in broad daylight while waiting for a train, and then there were the reactions of the regime that ignited anger, starting with the sending of batons against students who were holding a peaceful protest.

"When the students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts were attacked, it was clear that the SNS was left to send the presidents of municipalities, municipal councils and directors, who in the upper floors of the pyramid were deeply embedded in the system - because no one else wanted to do it," Stanojević points out, following on from the inhabitants of Cacileland. "In Ćaciland and during the blockade of the N1, powerful high-ranking officials were also present, along with other thugs and criminals who do it for pure financial gain. In short, the regime fell on Ćaciland and the police that guard it."

Finally, it is the turn of the SNS gatherings in Serbia - Jagodina, Sremska Mitrovica...

"They lie about how many people are present at those gatherings, they blackmail the poor for a crust of bread," Ivan Stanojević sums up his view.

What does all this mean for society and the ruling party? Is this shedding process irreversible? Has there been a situation that ordinary people, even the more visible ones, will not deal with the government, despite all the resources it has and the privileges it can offer? Or is it a momentary lull?

"The ruling party is not able to set up a stand at the market. Because those members of SNS also have families, children, friends and they are all angry. It is no longer a matter of money, functions and power, but of values ​​- whether something is right or wrong, whether I can justify and defend something or really not," believes Stanojević. For him, SNS is a ship that is sinking irretrievably and many from the top - who are not named Aleksandar Vučić - are increasingly thinking of saving themselves because the majority would not want to stay on a sunken vessel. Some are packing their bags or even making plans for which country to go to.

That gauging of the lifeboat can also be seen in the behavior of the members of the coalition partner, the Socialist Party of Serbia. Since its president Ivica Dacic has a political survival instinct probably better than anyone else on the scene here, signals are being sent from the party that, more or less visibly, undermine the SNS narrative. Vučić shouts - there is no sound cannon, SPS is coming - here is a cannon, just not that one... Branko Ružić, Espes' hope for crossing over to the other side, says with a smile on the N1 that he will walk at the big protest on March 15.

"No one normal, with a shred of credibility, will sit in the SNS government," believes Stanojević. "They're trying to find a way out, but it's over. Those remaining are resorting to ever-increasing repression in the hope that it will help them, but there's no going back. The genie has been let out of the bottle."

photo: Aleksandar Barda / Fonet

THE SECOND ROAD LEADS INTO DARKNESS

And Rastislav Dinić, assistant professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Niš and member of parliament of the Green-Left Front, believes that the situation is irreversible, but that there are two possible ways of developing the situation.

"The process is irreversible because the government can no longer count on democratic legitimacy and has the whole society against it," says Dinić.

In other words: there is no going back to the past, but there is a danger, which must be borne in mind, that - if the SNS remains in power - we would no longer even float in a facade of democracy, but would go towards real authoritarianism.

Rastislav Dinić also mentions that the list of countries, Serbia's best friends, is quite indicative of the path the government would like to follow - Hungary, Russia, Israel, America under Trump...

"No matter how much they scoffed at the reactions of the European Union, it still has a certain limiting role in how far this regime is ready to go. Since it still depends on the EU financially and in other ways, it does not dare to dive all the way into a dictatorship," says Dinić.

Nevertheless, he once again underlines that one must be aware of the possible slide of the regime further towards autocracy if this political and social crisis is not institutionally articulated in the form of, say, a transitional government.

IT'S BECOMING MORE AND MORE DIFFICULT TO TURN A CLOSE EYE

For Dinić, it is surprising when he sees how few people SNS has fallen to. He points out that this is obvious at every step - from television shows to street actions. Everything shows that the number of those who will risk their reputation, time, public visibility, and even a certain safety, is actually very unenviable for SNS.

"Was that number ever significantly higher? I don't know, but they certainly gave the impression that it was. And the aggravation of the situation further leads to the shedding of people who were in the party only from cost-benefits calculations", adds Rastislav Dinić.

When it comes to staff with expert knowledge, Dinić also states the following: at some (earlier) moment of his rule, the regime of Aleksandar Vučić tried to build a wider consensus and base of support and thus present himself as a mainstream center-right party. In the beginning, at a time when the propaganda fight against corruption was prominent, one of Vučić's first governments was partly expert - Dušan Vujović, Kori Udovići, Lazar Krstić, Srđan Verbić were also there...

"I think that in those periods", as Dinić explains, "the government tried to show itself as a normalizing one, one that respects the profession, the wider society and its actors. This began to change slowly from 2014, and then, year after year, it went more extreme towards violence against dissenters, consensus was increasingly imposed, i.e. less and less organically produced, legitimacy was based less and less on the trust of broad layers, and more on ultimatums and mastering electoral tactics. pre- and post-election engineering."

What does that have to do with personnel who have at least some integrity? There is another aspect: you cannot have expert support when your government no longer takes the public interest into account, Dinić underlines. According to him, it has become crystal clear for a long time that the regime of Aleksandar Vučić works in the interests of a small group of people. An example of this was the appointment of Sinisa Mali, a man of a thousand affairs and a proven plagiarist, to the position of Minister of Finance.

"The message is - such an important ministry must be controlled by someone who is personally close to Vučić", adds Dinić, reminding him of a phrase of Balint Magyar - it is about an adopted political family by analogy with a family in the mafia sense. In such conditions, there can be no support from the profession, from any expert with so much integrity.

"I think that everyone who cooperates with the regime must have a justification, a rationalization for why they do it - and that it is not only personal interest - and it has become increasingly difficult to maintain these rationalizations," explains Rastislav Dinić.

Could anyone really believe, even in the first years of government, that she was serving the public interest? Dinić believes that up to a certain limit, individuals could (self) deceive themselves and see the regime as a more or less technocratic, neoliberal right-of-center regime in a transition country, a regime that brings in investors and abolishes labor rights - which is necessary in order to adapt to the labor market - and brings certain results because the GDP grows. And now, they turned a blind eye to the fact that some measures were still undemocratic; finally, the neoliberal narrative in these parts of Europe is often associated with an anti-democratic approach.

And then the affairs started. One after the other, they showed that it was not an average transitional regime, and the regime began to be perceived by broad strata as brutal, violent, primitive...

photo: vladimir sporčić / tanjug

Finally, all regimes like Vučić's - and from whom he expects help - are at odds with experts and the academic community, and since they are not working in the public but in the private interest, they must deal with objectivity and truth in order to present that private interest as public.

"Vučić's regime has been trying for a long time to impose itself - which is a byproduct of that way of ruling - as the only source of truth, because otherwise his statements would be fact-checked and called into question," Dinić believes.

And whenever that happens, when his statements are (re)examined and proven to be untrue, a campaign is launched against the sources of criticism, which are often expert sources, economists, doctors, engineers...

So, in order to neutralize criticism, the regime must completely devalue it and destroy all its potential origins. This results in constant conflict with professional people.

"And then there are no more professors and academics who want to support you, sign for you and join your expert government," concludes Dinić.

LAST PILLARS OF DEFENSE

The interlocutors of "Vremen" agree that the resistance to the regime is very broad and that there are people with completely different views, some are even apolitical, but they are connected precisely by their attitude towards the current authorities, which they see as typically radical.

When it comes to the 700000 members of the party, it is not only about the number but also about the intensity of support and what that membership means to people. These weeks, it is clear that for the majority it was just sympathy for the benefit or some kind of attempt to get employment, a place in kindergarten for the child, some kind of help through the party booklet - because they couldn't do otherwise...

The main pillars of the regime, i.e. the open supporters, remain pensioners, but they are the ones whose TV is on, and from which comes the government's propaganda performed by Mitrović, Vučićević and others. As a result of this spade of hatred, an unstable elderly lady goes outside with a knife and attacks the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš.

And just as back then he had a lot of understanding for citizens who, because they are in a hurry, want to mow down people who pay their respects with their cars, so this time Vučić also said that this "injury is like when you cut a cucumber or an onion" and that "a mentally unstable elderly woman bought a knife that morning, and the police and the prosecutor's office will investigate whether that woman attacked her and who did it first." And so, the grandmother goes for a walk to buy something nice, buys a knife and attacks Dean Jovanović, who, by the way, has been persistently and brutally targeted by the government for weeks.

So it's no wonder that afterwards it's not easy to stand behind it and say - I'm part of those who attack students with cars or who justify a knife attack or who install themselves in buildings that are collapsing.