Today's Serbia before the parliamentary elections could be described through the title of Peter Pomerantsev's surrealist novel about the new Russia: "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible". Never in history has the definition of Serbia as "little Russia" in the Balkans been truer, as it is today. Citizens of Serbia going to the polls have the same meaning as holding elections in the Russian Federation: confirming the power of the president and legitimizing his authority.
Therefore, on Sunday, Serbs do not elect and vote for a new parliamentary convocation and a new government, but give legitimacy to Aleksandar Vučić. The past eight years have shown that it doesn't matter who the prime minister, head of diplomacy, minister of the interior, defense, economy, local self-government or justice is. This is confirmed by the campaign personally led by President Vučić, who, at least according to the Constitution of Serbia, should be the president of all its citizens and should not interfere in daily political life.
As in Russia, in Serbia we have one party, the president's, which wins half or more of the votes and one ex-communist party which certainly passes the census, all the others are at the level of statistical error. Thus, we will have ex-communists, that is SPS, in the parliament; vulgar nationalists, Žirinovski here, Šešelja here; moderate left, in Moscow Just Russia in Belgrade United Democratic Serbia. There will be a place for "patriots" from Šapić's Spas, just as there is for Rodina in the Duma, and there will be a place for the Movement of Free Citizens as well as the Russian Civic Platform, while Čeda Jovanović and Nenad Čanak will probably not end up, at least this time, as Griša Javlinski from Jablok.
The next Russian scenario Vučić will also this time, despite the absolute parliamentary majority of his party, form a coalition government with the prime minister and ministers who will all have to go to his cabinet for their opinion. As in Russia, the election campaign serves more to show loyalty to the head of state than to win votes, the president is thinking of them anyway, who else? With the progressives coming to power, the last achievement of October 5 - the regular election process - was canceled.
Vučić did not become a political Gulliver in Serbia because he grew into a great statesman, but because he is surrounded by an army of dwarfs, both in his party and in the opposition: the "Lilliputians" differ only in that some of them would serve him faithfully, and this is what more is possible and others dream of being in his place and are extremely frustrated that there is no sight on the horizon when that could happen. Listening to the opposition champions, one gets the impression that they want to be the chief and responsible editors of newspapers or directors of television stations with a national frequency rather than to govern the country.
We could also call the weekly declaration of Serbian citizens "Potemkin's elections". If you analyze the panorama of political parties whose names will appear on the ballots, you will notice that the joint adviser of Aleksandar Vučić and Milo Đukanović did a better job than Count Potemkin for his beloved Catherine the Great.
All political options are represented at the Serbian election table, since those that were missing, such as the United Democratic Serbia, were formed, and others were "made easier" to collect the necessary signatures to participate in the elections. In this way, Vučić put a mortgage on almost all future parliamentary parties. Each of the parties in the bloc Alliance for Serbia, which is boycotting the elections, has its counterpart among those who will be on the electoral lists: from those on the right, covered by Dveri and the People's Party, through the Party of Freedom and Justice in the center to the Democratic Party on the left.
As usual, the biggest crowd on the political stage is on the right, where we have a wide range of parties, from the radicals Vojislav Šešelj, Leviathan, Zavetnik, the Advanced Bloc of Velje Ilić, through the sovereignists from "Enough is Enough" who "scratched" Matteo Salvini's narrative, Marin Le Pen and Viktor Orban, to the populist Aleksandar Šapić (Spas) and salon nationalists from DSS who hid behind the coalition name "Broom". Sergej Trifunović's Movement of Free Citizens covers the enraged part of the electorate, the United Democratic Serbia hunts the few remaining pro-European voters, while Čeda Jovanović with the Coalition for Peace fell to defending his parliamentary mandate through minority parties. The painful fact for Serbia is that in the previous 30 years, since the introduction of multi-party system, it had only two prime ministers who interfered in their work: Zoran Điniđić and Vojislav Koštunica. All the others were puppets in the hands of Slobodan Milošević, the foreign ambassadors in Belgrade, Boris Tadić or Aleksandar Vučić: from Dragutin Zelenović, Radoman Božović, Nikola Šainović through Mirko Marjanović and Zoran Živković to Mirko Cvetković, Ivica Dačić and Ana Brnabić.
Regardless of whether the president of Serbia is an ex-communist, ex-democrat or ex-radical, the style of government is always the same and blatantly unconstitutional: in Serbia, they have become so used to it that the head of state, whose first task is to ensure respect for the Constitution, is the first to violate it. flagrantly and everyday. The difference is only in the range of interests, self-centeredness and energy. Milošević was only interested in big politics, Tadić in being important and charming, while Vučić is interested in everything, he wants to be a state, like Louis XIV. In Serbia, with Vučić, all elections became presidential, regardless of whether they are parliamentary, provincial or local. Citizens are always invited to express their opinion about him, even when they elect the president of the local community in Lajkovac or the house council of the building in Mirijevo. The chances that the election boycott will succeed are minimal. The Alliance for Serbia coalition, which advocates not going to the polls, has neither the instruments nor the capacity to monitor the elections. Serious international organizations for monitoring the election process are disinterested, so the catchphrase attributed to Stalin "who votes decides nothing, who counts the votes decides everything" will have its new confirmation on Sunday evening.
The only real opponents of Vučić are indifference and the coming economic crisis. The aggressive, brutal and vulgar vocabulary of tabloids and television with national frequencies is an indicator of how numb the citizens in Serbia are to media campaigns and do not react: the electroencephalogram is completely flat. The campaign against Montenegro is the best example that people no longer fall for tabloid spins. Vučić's media handlers have scared people with "wolves" so many times that when they actually come - no one will believe them. Those who wish Vučić well should remind him that Louis XIV did not say "I am the state", but on his deathbed he uttered: "Je m'en vais, mais l'ètat demeurera toujours" (I am leaving, but the state will remain forever ).
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