Students and others in the campaign

Until June 8 of this year, who is alive and who is dead. This is what the current political moment looks like on the eve of elections in one city - Zajecaru, and one municipality – To Kosjerić.

photo: Predrag Trokičić

Zaječar, the birthplace of Nikola Pašić, right next to the border with Bulgaria, hopes to get rid of the power of Boško Ničić, who seems to have been the eternal mayor since the establishment of the multi-party system. Kosjerić, a town at the foot of Maljen and Povlen, the birthplace of Miladin Zarić, whose name was "celebrated" by the Belgrade activists of the Most Remains initiative, wants to repeat the result of the first local elections in 1991, when it became, as they say, the first municipality where SPS did not rule.

To prevent this from happening in both places, the list that the ruling SNS and its partners formed under the code name "We will not give Serbia - Aleksandar Vučić" is an obstacle. By the way, that exclamation went through all of their focus groups in the last few months of civil and student protests in Serbia.

The public in Serbia is currently having fun discussing whether students should have called for elections right now and who could be on the "student list", even though the elections have not even been announced. He is also watching what is happening in these two places at the two ends of Serbia, places where citizens with registered residence of at least 11 months will be able to go to the polls on June 8 this year, and hopes that these could be two turning points.

Those in power will fight with their hands and feet to win as they know how, because they would not dare to look at a name from their list if they lose. On the other hand, the rest of Serbia is rooting for it to start from Zaječar and Kosjerić, so that it "goes in order" all over the country and thus see the backs of those who have been governing in every place, every street and village for 13 years.

Additional hopes were awakened by the fact that students have their "share" in both places. Namely, although neither Kosjerić nor Zaječar are university centers, they have hundreds of students. They, organized as God gave them, give a special tone to this campaign and to the initiative to better organize the opposition, to provide people for control and supervision, but also to provide muscles in the campaign, because it is necessary to visit every village, every alley, enter many houses and explain to the people why the time has come for the government to change.

"Everyone is looking at us", say both from Zaječar and from Kosjerić, proud of the fact that this could be the place from which change started. This would mean a lot for places that have their own pride and tradition, but which have been falling into disrepair over the years, becoming thinner demographically and easily becoming habitats for those who could not go anywhere.

EAST

Zaječar, once the "pride of eastern Serbia", a place widely known for the annual Gitariada, had companies that "rocked" the then great country. For example, "Crystal" was so strong, powerful and rich that in the 1980s it was the main sponsor of the Crvena Zvezda football club for several seasons. Today, Zaječar is famous for Boško Ničić, a local politician who changed all parties in order to always be in power, and for Zaječar beer, the brand of the company "Interbru" from Apatin, which made local beer a national attraction.

This city got a new stadium last year, but it is not played by the local low-level club Timok, but by the private branch of Zvezdan Terzić, the general secretary of FC Crvena Zvezda, the Belgrade club OFK Beograd. This club used to be the pride of Karaburma and all of Zvezdara, and today it is hosted in Kraljevica in Zaječar.

In Zaječar, a very active campaign is currently being conducted by five lists registered so far. In addition to the ruling progressives, there are two opposition lists. The change we believe in is a kind of left-center, and from the right-center comes United for the Rescue of Zaječar. In the first one are DS, SSP, PSG, Zajedno, Zaokret, NPS, Montoja i pravtici, We can do better, and in the second there are Ecological Uprising, New DSS, Dveri and citizen groups "Dr. Dejan Krstić" and "Save Mali Izvor and Timočka Valley".

The SPS list, which in Zaječar they say is the "List of Banet Ružić", whatever that means, and the governing set is completed by the list of Dr. Nenad Ristović, Domajinski za Zaječar, and the lists of Mi glas iz narod and Vlach/minority Coalition for Eastern Serbia are also expected.

Dr. Nenad Ristović represented the LDP in the last elections, he was a "hero of the opposition" because he returned the medal to Aleksandar Vučić, but later he "laid down" and became an MP on the list of progressives. He now performs independently, but in Zaječar he is seen as a part of the government and it is said that it is actually the list of entertainment manager Saša Mirković, a man who greatly helped the progressives to come to power in 2012, and not only with the money he invested in that party.

The progressives are led by the most famous veterinarian from Zaječar, Vladimir Videnović, who was "in the shadow" of Boško Ničić for a long time and is now appearing as a candidate for mayor for the first time. Everyone knows him in Zaječar and the surrounding area, he comes from a family of veterinarians, his father was an old SPS cadre and a veterinarian, and his son is also a veterinary student. He is a student vice-dean at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Belgrade and the people of Zaječar say that he was one of the first "students who want to study".

Zaječar hopes for a change, in addition to the opposition, students, local neighborhood initiatives and choirs joined the campaign, each in their own way trying to motivate voters to go to the polls in greater numbers and to vote for the opposition. Voting for 50 seats in the local assembly will take place at 79 polling stations and the opposition believes that it will have control over the process, election day and vote counting without any problems. On the other hand, the government is doing what it always does: in the election campaign, all the "big men" of the party and members of the Government are involved, who may not be doing anything visible, but one by one they are disciplinedly going to Zaječar and Kosjerić in order to further strengthen the message of the ruling regime.

So far, apart from the official campaign, there have been no reports regarding the election process. Equally in Zaječar and in Kosjerić, the opposition is trying to motivate those who do not live in those places but have a registered residence to come and vote on Sunday, June 8, because they believe that those votes will go to the opposition.

THE WEST

On the other side of Serbia, in small Kosjerić, there are currently three lists: one is the government list, the second is the opposition list, and the third belongs to the Russian party, about which there was already a dispute. There, they will fight for 27 seats in the local assembly, in an environment that has no media and no access to media from Belgrade that are not under the control of the regime, except on the Internet.

By the way, last year, Kosjerić surprised everyone with large anti-lithium protests and now it is believed that there may be a chance to topple the progressive monolith - the opposition, thin in terms of membership but numerous in terms of parties, stood under one banner and thus responded to the call of Kosjerić students, who, together with their colleagues, engaged in a campaign to motivate citizens to go to the elections.

Local activists say that there are many people who are registered but do not live permanently in Kosjerić - their arrival on June 8 could bring about a turnaround despite the strong "asphalt campaign" of the regime, which brought in "all machines from the region" and is paving so much asphalt "that there will be no meadow left for cattle to graze", they jokingly say in Kosjerić.

THE MIDDLE

Both places are connected by the enthusiasm that has arisen as a result of the student and civic movements of recent months, and now they want to channel that energy into change. When it comes to the rulers, the candidate for mayor in Zaječar is a respected person in his circle. In Kosjerić, the story is a little different - the progressive candidate for the mayor of the municipality there has been the mayor of the municipality until now. In addition, this local truck driver - as it turns out - became an economist in the meantime. The progressives and Vučić have nothing much to gain in the elections on June 8, but the loss of these two seats could further strengthen the demands for early parliamentary elections and the attempt to change the government in Serbia after 13 years of progressive rule.

Zaječar and Kosjerić can also show how solid the rest of Serbia is in their support and willingness to be in these cities during the campaign and to support those that the students supported. For Zaječar, it is known that a large rally will most likely be organized on Sunday, May 24, when he will invite all of Serbia to come east to the Timočka Krajina, and Kosjerić also wants to see if the force of progressive trustees will win this time, or if the people gathered around one idea will manage to fight it.

Both of them need the help and support of the rest of Serbia in order to create a result that may be the beginning of a wave at the level of the entire country. Even if the progressive regime is not "wiped out" in one fell swoop, all those who are in favor of the rule of law and a democratic system believe that Serbia should never be divided like this again: Vučić everything, the rest of Serbia nothing. So who is alive, who is dead until June 8, 2025.