Accelerating the creeping dictatorship

(radar.rs)

Let's say that the President of Serbia is right when he says that there are far fewer people on the streets, protesting, than before. Even if there are even fewer of them due to growing repression, what does that change in their attitude towards the government and him personally? Can that change his political destiny and, with a beating, transform citizens from a state of resistance to a state of acceptance? He is not a naive head of state. He knows that his time in power is up. The radiance he shows when he says that everything is over because there were, as he says, seven thousand protesters in Novi Sad, and until recently there were twice as many, is just a clumsy cover. An injection of optimism before another rallying of support in the fourth wave of "protests against blockades" that he organizes where he is allowed and can, on the outskirts of Serbian cities. He knows very well that the rebellious citizens, no matter how many there are on the streets, will not allow him to spend his last presidential term peacefully and that the pages of history about him, which he dreamed of, will be filled with completely different content. Repression, corruption, media control, blackmail, autocracy – these are the elements for a sketch of the character of the Serbian regime that are being described these days by the most influential world media. It is no secret that such governments always end up doing a lot of damage.

And while the president laments that his job is to listen and understand the people on the street, violence against protesters is growing, staged clashes are becoming an excuse for the police to intervene more and more brutally, drawn batons are fired at the backs of citizens, protests end in clouds of tear gas, smoke and unprecedented violence, and Vučić no longer hides that, if he could, he would prefer to close down the UM media and arrest Dragan Šolak. Deep within society, a cleansing of the terrain and cruel retaliation for supporting students and participating in the protests are underway.

While the public's focus remains on violence against protesters, deep within society, cruel reprisals, dismissals, and dismissals are underway.

A journalist from Tanjug has become “technologically redundant”, the reason being support for students and a post on her Instagram profile. For the same reason, journalists from the weekend edition of Politika i Khronika in that newspaper have been declared technologically redundant. A group of 15 employees at the “Dečja radost” preschool in Pančevo did not have their employment contracts extended because they were seen at a protest. A woman who worked in the City Administration of Šabac and was the head of a department was fired because she “violated her work duty by expressing political beliefs on social networks”. The same thing happened to employees of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce. Revenge came in the form of a series of dismissals at the Fifth Belgrade Gymnasium. A Serbian language teacher from Kragujevac was terminated for participating in a march with students. Three teachers at the gymnasium in Srbobran and 12 teachers at the gymnasium in Mladenovac were left without a job. The assistant director and chief inspector of the Tax Administration, who had assigned inspectors from the Task Force to investigate corruption in the case of the canopy collapse, were dismissed. The president of the state has recently publicly threatened prosecutors and judges with a change to the Constitution, after which the re-election will sift out the disobedient. The dean of the Faculty of Medicine and the director of the "Josip Slavenski" Music School have been dismissed, and finally the commander of the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit (SAJ) has been dismissed because "he is no longer counted on since he is not under the absolute control of Aleksandar Vučić."

"Now everything about the protests is going better for us," says Vučić. "People are starting to think rationally, not just romantically." And the rational thing to do, I guess, would be to bow their heads, because his whipping is coming. He punishes the rebels, purges the system of those he cannot trust, and closes the ranks of loyalists. But revenge always defeats the avenger in the end. And no matter how much violence he uses and how many dismissals he hands out, his political clock is ticking.