Illegal power, real power

It is now clear and visible to everyone with the naked eye - the protest energy in Serbia has not decreased. Neither intimidation, nor beatings, nor arrests are working, and there is no possibility that the government of Aleksandar Vučić will regain the power it once had. On the contrary - everything indicates that the decline in the ratings of the shaken Progressive Party will continue, which guarantees a further deepening of the crisis.

How long the agony will last and how painful the outcome awaits us, however, we do not know even after the Vidovdan rally at the invitation of students, which exceeded all expectations in terms of numbers. By demonstrating their willingness to oppose the police action to break up the rally, citizens have shown how unbearable life is for them in a country shackled by lies and crime. No amount of “playing the end game” will help, the fight continues. The awakened most vital part of society cannot be defeated by violence and fraud.

One side of the upcoming clash is clear and well known: there is no surprise in the fact that the government did not promise to call early parliamentary elections after the protests. We only received repeated claims that the students' demand would not be met, completely in line with the earlier prevailing assessments that Vučić simply must not run for election at this time, even under the existing, completely undemocratic conditions. This is why, after all, the students have given him the nickname "Cuckoo", which he will have a hard time getting rid of.

Equally unimaginable is the possibility of solving any of the problems that are piling up against him - from an awakened society, to the flow of information about corruption and crime, to the increasing number of reasons for losing trust in his own associates. In such conditions, the strengthening of repression with increasingly brutal propaganda seems inevitable.

And who is on the other side, what resources does it have at its disposal and what methods will it use?

The massive gathering in the middle of summer and after seven months of struggle shows that students are still the most influential factor on the political scene, and their withdrawal at a pre-defined deadline and the message to citizens that they have the "green light" to continue until freedom shows that they are not ready to carry the entire struggle on their own shoulders. But they are not giving up on their key role: they have declared the government illegitimate, and as the goal of their uprising they have designated the return of the state to the hands of the people.

There will be a debate in the coming days about what they achieved on Saturday by choosing people like, say, Milo Lompar as speakers at the rally, just a few days after he promoted the book of convicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic, all in the presence of Luka Karadzic, sentenced to two years in prison for - trampling a female student. Did they strategically knock the so-called "national card" out of Vučić's hands, without giving up on their intention to be a factor in bringing together people of different ideological orientations? Or will the promotion of national mythomania outweigh, with the effect of passivizing the civil part of dissatisfied Serbia?

And perhaps, after all, the most important element of the program they prepared for the Vidovdan gathering was the speech by the rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Đokić? With rhetoric far removed from all talk of "Serbian integralism" and centuries-old aspirations, according to research by the New Serbian Political Thought, rector Đokić is receiving so many insults from government representatives and their propaganda accomplices for a reason: data obtained from a telephone survey conducted on a representative sample in early June show that he is rated better by citizens than the long-invincible, but now declining, Vučić.

The elections, after all, are not tomorrow and there will still be plenty of time for learning, changes, agreements and preparations. Just as there will be arrests, pressures, targeting, persecution and all kinds of abuses and manipulations by the authorities, determined to somehow hold out until the end of the lucrative project. Or at least to try to do so by all means.

(radar.rs)