Blockade cookbook

"It doesn't matter the number of students in the blockade, if there was one who wanted to talk, I would talk. The current blockades are for some reason from this 'blockade cookbook' from Croatia. That 'blockade cookbook' as a plenum does not exist at our faculties. I don't know who to talk to, because we don't have a student parliament, but that plenum which is defined by the 'blockade cookbook'."

It is a long quote from the statement of Ana Brnabić, President of the Serbian Parliament. She gave it in the context of the current student protests that have been shaking Serbia for the past few weeks. At the time of writing this entry, on December 15, 2024, there were around fifty faculties at four state universities under blockade. A clear, direct reason for such a massive and engaged expression of student dissatisfaction is the tragedy that happened at the train station in Novi Sad. However, it was clearly just a trigger for the expression of deeper collective social dissatisfaction in Serbia, systematically produced for decades through the general economic-political, social and cultural-intellectual devastation and decadence of that state and society.

However, on this occasion we will stick to the quoted statement, which can be interesting and indicative for several reasons. Brnabić obviously does not understand, or is simply pretending to be politically stupid, that the principles of the plenum, as a collective decision-making body, are not based on representative, but on direct, participatory democracy that comes from below, that is, from the social base. Therefore, invoking the student parliament and similar representative, official bodies of student organization, which in countries like these in our region are often just an extended arm of ruling policies, is a completely failed thesis. Even more interesting in the statement is the accusation against the famous "blockade cookbook", that valuable work which is obviously still an inspiring and usable document-legacy of those long-ago student blockades in Croatia, a decade and a half ago.

It is amazing in what ways the political nationalists in Serbia are ready to find conspiracies from Croatia, the on-duty culprits for the misfortunes that befell them at home. At the same time, of course, the others, on the opposite side, are not far behind. It is a pragmatic symbiosis of political manipulators from seemingly opposing camps. But female students are still smarter than politicians, even these almost two decades of systematic dumbing down in the name of higher education reform, called the Bologna process, have not managed to change that.

That's why the real answer to the complaints from Brnabić's camp came not from her political colleagues from Croatia, but from local activist student initiatives that organized a symbolic event, fifteen minutes of silence in front of the faculty as a sign of support for colleagues from Serbia. At the same time, they showed that they do not forget, signing the invitation to the event with the slogan: One world - one struggle.

(portalnovosti.com)