While Aleksandar Vučić poured and on TikTok, and there met Grandma Piglet, his loyalists took to the field. To the streets, markets and squares in order to see, as someone put it, "how much the people hate them."
The government has started campaigning for elections, although it is not known whether they will be postponed as long as possible. But, as the SPS credo used to say - if the elections are organized properly, the people don't even have to go to them.
That is the title of the new issue of "Vremena", which is on newsstands from this Thursday (February 5).
"The regime tried to respond to the students with its actions, but it was clear that in that field they can only copy what the students have already done," writes Slobodan Georgiev in the introductory text and estimates that the regime will play on open conflicts, if it deems it necessary.
How are students coping?
Communication expert Lazar Džamić also talks about the topic in the interview. He says that police force or revenge against dissidents are not simply "messages" but the only concept.
"Unfortunately, everything we've seen so far - unless there are some spectacular 'black swans' such as foreign intervention or a heart attack - is just the beginning of an even blacker story. I'm sorry if I seem pessimistic, but regimes like this don't leave power peacefully," he believes.
Džamić, who built his name in London, also talks about the students' strategy, the campaign and the relationship with the opposition for "Vreme". He says that the students put the entire opposition in the same basket - maybe because they think they are all the same, which is a mistake.
"Or because the propaganda strategy gives them the right that the collective perception of the 'opposition' among the people is very bad and that associating with it would 'contaminate' the response, while cooperating with some and rejecting others would lead to a split in the wider coalition they managed to build," says Džamić.
"That's why they decided to ignore everything, hoping - I hope too - that those who share their values will certainly help, secretly, 'below the grain', if not publicly like the Democratic Party."
War of generations
Slobodan Bubnjević brings an extensive article on electoral demography and asks the question, is there a war of generations in Serbia?
"Two out of three pensioners support the regime, and among the working population aged 30 to 65, the opposite is true - two out of three support students. This is an unusually large imbalance that the regime exploits, and which, considering that Serbia is an increasingly aging society, must not be ignored," he writes.
Read all these articles and interviews in the new "Vremen" from Thursday (February 5). Or subscribe now to printed or digitally edition.
