RTS, demonstration exercise

Scene #1: Tuesday, March 10-11, around 2.30:XNUMX a.m. It's raining heavily. Hundreds of students and citizens are in front of the RTS building. They jump and sing: "Whoever doesn't jump is Ćaci."

It was enough for a message about blocking RTS and a student call to "join" to circulate on social networks after ten in the evening, so that thousands of people came out in the dead of night, to be there for hours, to bring food and everything they needed, to make everyone buzz with energy. Can you imagine such a situation a year ago?

Scene #2: Takovska 10 is in the dark (literally). Light comes from two windows. One is open. N1's camera zooms in - someone is watching television in there, watching the protest in front of his building and the media where he works, right on N1.

Scene number 3: It's morning, more people squeeze through a narrow passage, where the wire is cut. It looks like basement rooms. The man who jumps in does so from a semi-lying position, the six of them waiting their turn. It's not rescuers or speleologists' practice. We are talking about the journalists of the Public Media Server, the one whose colleague the day before called the students in the blockade a mob. They go to work.

Scene number 4: The gendarmerie in full gear is walking quickly towards the entrance to the RTS. Along the way, one of them hits a man in civilian clothes who does not move out of their way, perhaps trying to enter the machine. The blow was strong, the man's eye was bleeding. The orderly runs after him to help him, one of the students shouts: "Sir, do you need help?", someone else shouts: "Help him." But the victim of police brutality – it turns out, a plainclothes policeman – almost runs past everyone, without saying a word.

Two hours later: Aleksandar Vučić posts on his Instagram profile (place: Clinical Center of Serbia): "Lazar Baćić, a policeman, was attacked by Bolshevik plenums in front of the RTS building. He received serious bodily injuries. Terrible. They hit him with a boxer. Thugs think that everything is allowed to them. It is not. They will answer for every violence they have committed. So much for peaceful protesters and above all the vulnerable. Normal Serbia will win, democratic Serbia will win."

Footage of what really happened is already being widely circulated on social networks and broadcast in professional media. The speed of spin collapse is increasing; this time it is measured in minutes.

The morning after: the resigned Prime Minister M. Vučević accuses a student or a member of an opposition party of a "shameful attack" on the police officer Baćić; Milenko Jovanov goes one step further - it is a hybrid war, he declares, alluding to the fact that the video may not be authentic. They both say that and don't blink.

What could be seen from the blocking of public services? What did that event show in the long run, especially before March 15, when it comes to students, what about citizens, and what about the authorities, especially about President Aleksandar Vučić?

photo: ap photo / marko drobnjaković

BACKWARDS

This regime was based, among other things, on the popularity of Aleksandar Vučić, who behaves like a kitsch celebrity. In addition, a strict commander who gets angry with his subordinates while they humbly nod their heads, a man of the people with a "ti" for everyone who does not know how to use modern "sokocals", omnipresent and omnipotent and - most importantly - a man who controls the entire country, from the tenants' assembly to all institutions.

But suddenly that image began to take shape and every day it becomes sadder, and he looks like a bad actor trying to get back on the stage in his late years. And everything slips out of his hands, from coalition partners - this was seen in that fight between Dacic and Vucic, which, it seems, was not just a game for the public - through political strategies and spins to daily events.

Hence, the blocking of public services was one in a series, but an important indicator. The students in the blockade managed to organize simultaneous protests in front of the public broadcasters - Radio-television of Serbia in Belgrade and Radio-television of Vojvodina in Novi Sad - and to gather thousands of citizens on a rainy night without any of the authorities finding out before the action had already started. What is left to the government? Spin, which hits her head like a boomerang and the president's angry face because he has been five steps behind every student move in recent weeks.

Students in the blockade regime are unattainable in terms of organization, ideas, energy and creativity. It is also clear from the grotesque attempts of the authorities - which, by the way, have all the resources - to imitate everything the students have already done - from the vulgar reply (red middle finger) to the red fist to the tragicomic camping at Pionirski Park.

WHAT'S AFTER THE SPINE?

And the question arises again - what is left of the government when hundreds of thousands of people pour into the streets of the city? New footage of the student reception is already arriving, a continuation of the social catharsis.

Vučić persistently flirts with the idea of ​​violence. On the one hand, in this way, before March 15, it scares the citizens so that as few of them as possible go out to protest.

He does the same thing when he scatters prison sentences for future protesters, precisely on RTS, where he predicts that the most serious crimes against the Republic of Serbia will be committed on Saturday.

"It is an attack on the constitutional arrangement of the Republic of Serbia in accordance with Articles 308 and 309 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia," said Vučić. "For 308, a prison sentence of three to 15 years is prescribed. For 309, you have different views, but the basic one - incitement and incitement to carry out an attack on the constitutional order of Serbia, from six months to five years."

Judging by the protests so far, that tactic is not working because the fear has melted away.

On the other hand, the fact is that when the majority stops believing in the government's spin, violence follows. This was seen, for example, in the case of Vladimir Putin and Recep Erdogan. This should be taken into account when talking about the scenario in which the government would succeed in suppressing these protests, as if nothing had happened. However, in order for that to happen - if we exclude the diversity of the context - it is necessary that there is a somewhat strong morality in the apparatus of force, and that the silent majority of citizens are still on the side of the government, that is, unwilling to act. And that is hardly the case in today's Serbia.

Finally, the last important element - the government persistently shows that it is ready for anything, even to sacrifice its own - pawns for special purposes. Therefore, and the students in the blockade show that they are amazingly aware of this, they should maintain constant vigilance and calmness, not react to provocations and not enter into the regime's games. And that sheds light on another element that contained the protest in front of public services.

THAT EXPENSIVE WORD - FOCUS

Namely, for years, both opposition politicians and critics of the government, as well as the media that are not under the control of the regime, fished on (almost) every hook that the government threw, and the attention was scattered in many directions. And they weren't even hooks, but long lines in a row. Blocked students seem immune to this kind of distraction.

Shortly after the camp at Pionirski Park was opened, and the bizarre things there started to attract attention, overnight the students in the blockade returned their focus to the demands and protests, to the event that follows and the pressure on the media, which is obliged to report objectively, but does not do so (besides, the journalists there could do a good job if they wanted to).

AND OF COURSE, RTS

At the time we close this issue (Tuesday, March 11), the blockade is in its 20th hour. Citizens continue to gather in large numbers in front of Takovska 10. RTS appealed to the students "to give up the violent blockade" and described their action as a "dangerous step into open conflicts with unforeseeable consequences".

During the day, a group of RTS employees, otherwise members of the informal group Our Protest, addressed the students and supported their demands and struggle. They also appealed to their colleagues not to enter the building while the blockade lasts: "Save human dignity, if the irresponsible behavior of our leadership prevented you from entering safely, do not allow them to enter the building through side entrances, secret passages and through windows." Insiders say that the atmosphere in RTS is tense and painful and that dissatisfaction is expressed openly.

On the RTS website, there are several news items, several articles that follow the event of the blockade, as well as the statements of Brnabić, Vučić and Vučević (the titles are both in red), Zlatibor Lončar and Dejan Ristić... Of the student statements, only the call for the blockade was read. A video of the Gendarmerie hitting the policeman Baćić was also published, accompanied by the words: "A video is spreading on social networks, which, according to the students, shows the moment the policeman was injured."

Your right to know everything.