Saturday morning, the first time after almost two months that Belgrade feels fresh. A walk along Jove Ilića street is pleasant. And then, suddenly, an almost unreal scene: a long line of people stretches down the street, all the way to Liberation Boulevard. I turn on the camera and shoot. The time goes on and on. People are standing quietly, there is no noise, they are talking to each other, but without the discussion and nervousness that once followed the lines for BUSH - flour, oil and sugar. I come across a woman with a visible warden's badge. He passes by a long snake of patient people and tells them:
photo: marija janković...
"If you're in a hurry, let me know. We'll make sure you get in early." No one answers. It's as if it's not too difficult for anyone, nor does anyone feel tired.
I ask the people who have almost reached the entrance of the building, above which stands the banner "Students win", how long they have been waiting.
"An hour and a half, almost two," they answer.
When asked how they cope with the wait, an unusual answer follows:
"Justice loves standing, justice loves walking, justice loves patience."
I want to hear how they think to catch up with the opponent, who is in election race started long before them, rested, in expensive equipment and with almost all state resources available.
"Absolutely we can. We've known about Zeno's paradoxes since antiquity. We think it's unequivocally slag. Persistence will always cover unfair play."
Perhaps that race is best described by the famous part of Zeno's paradox preserved in Aristotle's Physicists:
"In a race, the fastest runner can never overtake the slowest, because the pursuer must first reach the point from where the pursued started, and therefore the slowest always has the advantage."
These maybe slower but persistent runners are trying to work by the rules. They wait for hours, they are patient and they don't give up. Their "persecutors" collected signatures for the list in just an hour, without standing in long queues that the public could see.Aleksandar Vučić – United Serbia”.
FOUR SIGNATURES PER MINUTE
Aleksandar Vučić first boasted that 170.000 signatures were collected in three hours. By the time the list was published, the number had grown to 224.557. At least 10.000 signatures were required to participate in the parliamentary elections.
If reading an ID, entering data, verifying identity and verifying a single signature takes between four and five minutes, 170.000 signatures in three hours would require between 3.778 and 4.723 notifiers, all working simultaneously.
According to the calculations of the former commissioner for information of public importance, Rodoljub Šabić, if all approximately 230 public notaries in Serbia worked only for SNS, each of them would have to certify about four signatures per minute. Therefore, one complete verification would have to last about fifteen seconds.
If, on the other hand, four minutes were needed for each citizen, all 230 notaries could certify around 10.350 signatures in three hours. At five minutes per signature, that number drops to 8.280. Of course, signatures can be certified by municipal and city notaries, but even with them, the scale of the entire operation would remain difficult to explain.
This calculation in itself is not evidence of illegality. It is, however, serious enough to demand a precise answer: how many certifiers worked for the SNS list, in which places, at what time, and how many signatures did each of them certify? Additional doubts were caused by announcements according to which the collection of signatures was announced in some places before the REC adopted the appropriate forms. The announcement itself does not prove that the authentication actually began before the adoption of the forms, but that is another question that could be answered by a precise insight into the time and place of each authentication.
And then there was a mistake that perhaps best speaks to the speed of the whole operation. On the boxes with signatures, presented in front of the cameras during the official presentation of the list, "Aleksandar Vučić" should have been written in capital letters. "Aleksndar Vučić" was written instead. In their rush to get to Rick first, the Progressives managed to misspell even the name of the man on whom their entire list rests.
photo: Zoran Drekalović / FonetWE WAITED AS LONG AS IT WAS NECESSARY: Collecting signatures for the student list
ROWS OF RAISED HEADS
Professor of the Faculty of Transportation, Aleksandar Čupić, one of the candidates of the Student List, sees the lines for signing as a continuation of the liberation process that began with student protests.
"Goodness, even when you put an obstacle to it, somehow comes to light. If there were enough validators, there would be no lines. But no one saw the lines of the progressives, and the student lines were seen by all of Serbia," says Čupić. He was most pleased with the image of people waiting for hours with their heads held high. "Nobody was embarrassed. There were no looks down."
For Čupić, it is more important that the release no longer applies only to students.
"They don't need to free me. It needs to spill over to the people who brought them rolls, but weren't allowed to get out of the car. The one who is freed once, will remain free no matter what happens."
The people from Jovo Ilić may not have seemed like someone who was just performing a great political act. They stood, talking, occasionally checking their phones and moving a few steps forward. But by waiting, they showed that they were ready to invest something that is rarely given voluntarily in politics - their own time.
A MEETING THAT NO ONE ORGANIZED
Just as during the previous two years they announced the changes with walks, bicycle tours and original actions, on the day of the presentation of the list, the students did something that Serbia had almost never seen - a rally without the classic announcement and party organization.
Vasa's street was filled with people. Flags of Serbia, faculties and citizens' assemblies were flying. Laughter and chants of "Victory, victory" were heard. The difference compared to the gatherings that Serbia is used to was seen precisely in the optimism. There were no buses, no sandwiches, no attendance lists, no people watching to see when someone would let them go home.
"They say that Serbia is divided, and Serbia has never been more beautiful," Nemanja Karović, assistant professor of the Faculty of Teachers, said from the improvised stage.
Milica Popović, a student at the Faculty of Dentistry, spoke for him, one of those who had the "Pegasus" spyware installed. After all the walks and bike tours, she said that it became clear that Serbia had made up its mind.
"The time has come to take over the institutions of this country, that is, to return them to the citizens," said Popović. The student struggle, she said, today belongs to "majority Serbia". The boxes were then picked up by student representatives from all universities in Serbia. Next to them was a model of the Belgrade Pobednik, who also held a box with signatures.
Signatures no longer looked like a dead letter on paper. The people who wore them said that they carried the hope of the whole of Serbia before them.
STUDENTS ENTER THE INSTITUTION
The column that started from the Rectorate reached the headquarters of the Republic Election Commission. In front of the entrance, the students played a round with the trumpeters. An unusual atmosphere for teaching the electoral list: no coercion, classic political speeches and learned party choreography. It looked more like a spontaneous celebration than the start of an official election procedure.
After almost two years, the students entered a state institution that is not a university. They brought boxes with signatures into the Rika building, and were met by members of the Commission at the table. While inside the strictly prescribed procedure began, trumpets, song and chanting continued to resound outside.
In parallel with the presentation of signatures, all 250 candidates for MPs were presented to the public. In the version of the list released to the public, there were no ordinal numbers next to the names. The official electoral list handed over to Rik must, of course, have a fixed order of candidates, but the way it was presented carried clear symbolism: without a single name in the title, without a photo of the leader and without a graphic emphasis on the first among equals.
Direct democracy, at least in an attempt, was not only the message of the campaign but also the way the list was created. Even immediately before its publication, Čupić did not know where he was. He says that the other candidates he talked to didn't know that either.
"Neither do I know, nor do I care."
Much more important is the process by which the 250 names were arrived at: discussions to which dissenters were also invited, decision-making by various university centers and detailed consideration of each proposed candidate.
"If you wonder how the Student List was created, ask yourself how all other lists were created."
Čupić says that when students have to make an important decision, they try to attract those who do not agree with the proposal to the meeting. When the issue is considered from all angles, the final decision becomes better.
One of the most important lessons he received from the student logisticians who organized the foot marches. Many of them were initially against the walk, but they were overruled by the overwhelming desire of Novi Sad students. They accepted the decision and then took on the most difficult part of the organization. "If someone had outvoted me at that age, I probably would have turned around and left. This generation is different. It's a democracy."
In the political life of Serbia so far, the current that loses the intra-party vote most often splits off, founds a new party or becomes a mortal enemy of yesterday's comrades-in-arms. Students try to show that it is possible to be too loud, accept the decision of the majority and continue working together.
photo: marija jankovićOPTIMISM AND ENTHUSIASM: Student orderly
NOVAC, TELEVISION AND SONG
While the students started the campaign by lining up, walking and bringing boxes to Rik, the progressives activated the resources that have been at their disposal for years. Vučić's speeches were again broadcast almost non-stop on television with a national frequency. At the same time, the payment of one-time assistance to pensioners of 20.000 to 35.000 dinars began. A letter from Aleksandar Vučić also arrived with the money.
The Minister of Finance Sinisa Mali took care of the additional picture of the beginning of the campaign. In the club for the elderly, he joined the pensioners who sang the song "Red Apples".
On one side, in front of Rick, the students play a circuit with trumpeters. On the second, Minister Mali sings with people whose accounts received money from the state budget on the same day.
The one-time aid is not money from the Serbian Progressive Party or a personal gift from its list holder. It is the money of all citizens of Serbia. However, the way in which the aid is presented should produce the exact opposite impression: to turn the budget money into personal gratitude towards Vučić and, ultimately, into a vote in the elections.
Thus, two campaigns became visible already in the first days. One has television frequencies, institutions, almost unlimited money and signatures collected at a speed that defies the logic of the whole process. The other has people waiting in line for hours, walking hundreds of kilometers, visiting villages and trying to make up for lost time with perseverance.
Zeno would probably be pleased.
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