FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Vučić regularly quarrels with almost every neighbor.
Serbian students had called for a protest, and a surprisingly large number responded. Even the unused Serbian Railways trains could not stop the flow of protesters into the capital over the weekend. A vast sea of people filled Belgrade's Slavija Square, spilling into completely overcrowded side streets.
The student blockades of universities, which lasted almost a year, are over. But anger and resentment over corruption and clientelism in Serbia have not subsided, not even a year and a half after the avoidable disaster in Novi Sad: Sixteen people lost their lives in November 2024 when the canopy of the city's recently renovated train station collapsed.
State visit to distant China
While police tried to downplay the unexpectedly high number of participants on Saturday at "34,300 demonstrators", the "Archive of Public Gatherings", which specializes in assessing mass gatherings using aerial photography, estimates the figure at 180,000 to 190,000 people, making it the second largest demonstration in Belgrade since the overthrow of former autocrat Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000.
Aleksandar Vučić, the former Minister of Information and current head of state, may not face a violent coup, but he still has reason to fear the defeat of his national-populist SNS party. The ominous sign of the large demonstration has once again shown this authoritarian political chameleon that he can neither extinguish nor ignore the growing discontent with mafia activities, corruption and abuse of power.
During a state visit to faraway China over the weekend, a thin-skinned Vučić dismissed accusations that Belgrade had orchestrated the unrest after the demonstration had ended, again using hired thugs. Instead, the Serbian head of state claimed that “billions” had been “invested in the media and parapolitical organizations” to bring him down: “But despite this, we repelled this attack.”
Indeed, Serbia's shrewd and power-hungry leadership seems long overdue for a change. Whether a wavering Vučić calls early elections in the fall, winter, or even this summer, his thoroughly discredited SNS party is likely to struggle to maintain its position. As a united alliance of the fragmented opposition, or even cooperation with the students running their own independent list, remains elusive, the bad news for Serbia's weak dominant force is mounting.
The arrest of Belgrade police chief and former Vucic adviser Veselin Milic for covering up a mafia murder has accelerated the president's continued decline in popularity. Within the EU, the self-promoter, long celebrated as a supposed "reformer," now faces open distrust.
Mostly for domestic political reasons, Vučić regularly clashes with almost every neighbor. But it is not just the fact that his nationalist tactics of diverting attention from domestic problems are becoming increasingly ineffective and that his preferred role as a firefighter for self-inflicted fires is no longer in demand that is troubling him.
It is mainly the dismissal of his political friend, Viktor Orban, that is clearly troubling the like-minded Vučić: Like Hungary's former prime minister, Serbia's self-proclaimed champion against corruption could ultimately get stuck in the quagmire of corruption for which, according to his critics, he is largely responsible.
In the campaign against corrupt and criminal personalities announced again by Vučić, the head of state should start "with himself and his inner circle", such as the brother of President Andrej Vučić or the leader of the SNS and former Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, criticizes conservative opposition politician Borislav Novaković (NPS). / Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Tageblatt"
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