Breaking the bottom in sequels, that's how the strategies could be described ruling parties before the upcoming local elections. Admittedly, there is not much new in that repertoire: the same patterns, the same mechanisms, only the intensity has been increased. A few weeks ago - although the news reached the public only recently - two employees of the British embassy came to Aranđelovac for a meeting with representatives of the local government and the opposition.
Although the whole situation seems like déjà vu, there are also certain new moments. What are they telling us? And what is the tested scenario and what does it say?
OLD RECIPE FROM PROGRESSIVE CUISINE
Ingredients: attackers - one to three individuals or individuals from the headquarters of "Informer" or the Serbian Progressive Party (evil tongues would say - is there any difference at all?).
Targets of attack - a critic of the government; a member of the profession who refuses to comply with the demands from above because they conflict with the rules of the profession; simply someone whose professional or personal identity has been judged suitable for public reckoning.
Preparation: making sačekusha.
Let's say, two young men somehow know exactly that they will officials of the British Embassy to have the meeting cancelled. They recognize them in a cafe nearby (let the one who knows what every employee of the embassy of influential countries looks like be the first to throw a stone), just then they take out their phones to record, use key words - traitor, spy, mercenary... They behave aggressively, get in their faces. If the target moves, they follow it, throw it, insult it.
It is clear that they are looking for a reaction from which they will then try to create an additional "story". Surprisingly - or perhaps quite expectedly - the targets are usually very decent people, calm to almost incredible limits, so they mostly remain immune to barrages of insults and threatening behavior.
Serving: all of that, of course, is then "gilded" by "Informer", because the footage reaches that newsroom while you said the biscuit. And then the story continues: the insults continue, and DJ Vučićević & co. they set themselves up again and again as a measure for hate speech and the most naked simpleton.
photo: anemDIGNITY AGAINST THE PRIMITIVISM OF THE BOSS OF THE INFORMER: Prosecutor Boris Majlat
WHAT IS IT INTENDED TO ACHIEVE??
In this way, Vučićević attacked prosecutor Boris Majlat, the prosecutor of the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Šabac and, until recently, the chief prosecutor for high-tech crime, an elected member of the High Council of Prosecutors in the first elections. However, in the repeated elections, Majlat lost to a candidate from Stefanović's current (read: government current). While Vučićević was chasing him around the corridor and fighting, Majlat behaved very dignified.
A similar pattern was seen in the case of the so-called tiktoker Aleksandar Šulc, who is close to SNS, who - as media sympathetic to him write - "exposes the blockaders". He approached Dragan Bjelogrlić while he was sitting in a cafe, filmed him with his phone and threw things at him. Bjelogrlić reacted by knocking the phone out of his hand - which was then used as a reason for pro-regime newspapers to write that he "physically attacked the young man" and once again showed his "aggressive nature".
One of the points is to provoke a reaction from which an "incident" is then made. If it succeeds, the duration of the "news" is extended and the number of adjectives and nouns that pollute the public space increases. If it doesn't work, my God, the mechanism serves anyway to intimidate all those who dare to disobey the authorities ("we'll chase you down the corridors like this"), then, to show - and to our own - that a confrontation is desirable, that there is strength, and finally - to build/strengthen the image of (at that moment) a desirable enemy.
BAD SCRIPT AND AWARD FOR ACTORS
That's how the event in the Arandjelovac cafe looked like. A man approaches a man and a woman and addresses her: "Are you Zvezdana Montenegrin? A British mercenary who came to this town during the election campaign? Can you answer a few questions: why did you come and what do you plan to do in this town? Answer me and the Serbian people who will see this video. You came to Arandjelovac to create chaos, to cause disorder, to destroy the constitutional order..."
The only novelty is that this time the target was the employees of a foreign embassy - people who did not "provoke" the government for anything else.
Milorad Savić from Arandjelov, a member of the SRCE party, wrote on a social network that he was also attacked and prevented from meeting with representatives of the British embassy. He described the situation as follows: "The insults that were uttered that day against people from the British embassy, but also against me, are monstrous. It wasn't enough for them to insult us in the restaurant, so they continued it on the street."
Savić also stated that the man who filmed the entire scene was Stefan Bošnjaković, a member of the SNS, who, after this event, as a representative of the coalition "Aleksandar Vučić - Aranđelovac, our family", was appointed as a deputy member of the municipal election commission in the expanded composition. It is interesting that on his profile on the social network, Bošnjaković, in addition to stating his membership in the ruling party, also claims to be a screenwriter. Not overly creative, it's easy to tell.
This was followed by a very succinct statement from the British Embassy expressing - interesting choice of words - their disappointment that two men had aggressively approached their employees, harassed them and prevented them from doing their jobs. It is added that this procedure undermines the reputation of Serbia. Probably, in the translation from diplomatic to "ordinary" language, a more serious message could be read here.
Vučićević said that everyone can "spit under his window", because, according to him, they are spies who together with "blockade politicians" are trying to influence the elections. Finally, when asked by Gordana Uzelac (read: ordered) about the whole case, Aleksandar Vučić said that it is good that those foreign factors drink coffee in Serbia, because it increases VAT. In other words, he did not condemn the attack, that is, he publicly gave the wind at his back for future attacks.
OPPORTUNITY ENEMY AND MACHINE ACCELERATION
To summarize the key elements of this scare mechanism: it will get worse. We have seen it in the past months, and we are yet to see it. The government is, realistically, weakened, and support has never been lower. This means that in order to win the election, you need - more violence, more payments for votes, even more sinister blackmailing of public sector employees and threats to others, in other words - even more terrible "(pre)election engineering". In question are ten local governments, approximately 245.000 voters. This means that there is a certain dispersion of resources - thugs, money... In such circumstances, intimidation completes its own ("go ahead, keep it up, you see we are strong") and silence the "enemies". And among those "enemies", one group is particularly important - election observers. Students and choirs are being organized, citizens are more and more motivated to get involved, and this does not suit the authorities. Incidentally, in some previous elections, the British Embassy was one of only a few that sought accreditation for their diplomats to monitor the elections. Maybe this was a message sent to them in that direction.
By the way, the meeting in Arandjelovac with representatives of the local government and the opposition was scheduled before the announcement of local elections. But after the announcement, the situation, we see, is different.
Also, the authorities want to show their electorate - the one that has no direct benefit except biscuits, coffee, oil and beans - that the "evil, collective West" is trying to interfere in Serbia's internal affairs, but President Vučić, of course, forbids them to do so. Vučić - the defender of Serbian interests against foreign powers that hate Serbia (embodied in bribed blockaders, media that do not praise him, the non-governmental sector that does not applaud him...), is one of the very carefully and persistently constructed images in the public eye. The first problem in this story is that more and more "grandparents" are gaining immunity - both through talking to their descendants and looking into their empty pockets - to these stories. Which leads us to another problem, which is that President Vučić generally gives everything that the "hateful West" asks for (see under: Kosovo, subsidies...).
In addition, when it comes to these and such attacks, he did not have the best time when, in a state of questionable sobriety, he called the MEPs "scumbags". Then, he has not been allowed to speak about America for a long time. Trump, like a cheerleading rabbit, constantly repeats that he prevented the war between Serbia and Kosovo - the local public would like to know what it was all about - but Vučić remains silent as if stunned. Who stays? Well, Britain, for daily needs, can serve as a convenient enemy. She is part of the "hateful West", there is animosity towards her in part of the public, and last year more than 20 members of the British Parliament demanded sanctions against Vučić because of Serbia's foreign policy. Just wait until the next one directed by SNS and "Informer".
