/ world today news/ Belgrade is facing a third consecutive night of protests. The Serbian opposition refused to recognize the election results and the victory of the pro-presidential forces. The European Union, which has long had a crush on the Serbian government because of its refusal to break with Russia, has already joined the game on the side of the protesters. Is there a chance for the Serbian “Maidan” to win?
What is happening in Belgrade has all the signs of what we have come to call the “Color Revolution” or “Maidan”.
Refusal of the opposition to accept the election results with a demonstrative hunger strike. Constantly renewed protests with road closures. Siege of the electoral commission with obstruction of its officials. Support for protesters from Western NGOs and patronage from Western governments. Slogans in English for viewers of BBC, CNN and others. Loud propaganda campaign against the “dictatorship” of the authorities, which are “controlled by Russia”.
We have seen all this more than once. The current Serbian history is like a benchmark, even if you accept it as the House of Weights and Measures. The prime minister of the republic, Anna Brnabic, stated this directly: “They planned Maidan in Belgrade to come to power through a revolution.”
And emphasizes: “This will not happen.”
It probably really won’t. Or it will happen, but to a small extent – without a full-fledged revolution. The Maidan is the Maidan, but it has a nuance. More precisely, two: big and small.
Let’s start with the small one: according to its requirements, this is a really small, purely local “Maidan”, which is trying to challenge the results not of the parliamentary elections in Serbia, but only of the elections in Belgrade.
At the republican level, there is nothing and no one to dispute: the ruling Serbian Progressive Party outnumbers the motley opposition coalition Serbia Against Violence by half – 48% to 24%. The victory of President Aleksandar Vucic’s forces became expected: what had to happen happened. A large-scale propaganda campaign, in which even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky participated, did not help the opponents of the Serbian government.
This does not mean that there is nothing to analyze the results of the parliamentary elections. For example, the Socialists, previously led by Slobodan Milosevic, and now (but hardly for long) led by Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, performed very poorly. At the same time, the result for the liberal opposition is very good – significantly higher than what it averaged under Vučić.
Unexpectedly, the “Voice of the People” party, led by Branimir Nestorovic, a supporter of the theory of the flat earth and the origin of green-eyed people from Martians, entered the parliament. But the classic radical nationalists of Vojislav Seselz and the aggressively pro-Russian “Dveri” and “Zavetnitsi” failed to overcome the 3% electoral barrier.
Vucic is happy about it: the Serbian government has recently distanced itself from both too pro-Western and too pro-Russian forces. And the majority of the population is also satisfied with this: Serbs appreciate the fact that, despite the pressure, Vučić did not do the unacceptable – he did not recognize Kosovo and did not impose sanctions against Russia, but at the same time he managed not to break with the West, on which Serbia depends economically.
There are, of course, complaints about it, numerous but not critical compared to the alternative.
Another thing is Belgrade, a big city and once a showcase of multinational Yugoslavia: all kinds lived there, you can even meet Albanians. In the capital, voters are more liberal, which is true in many countries, and incomes are higher, giving a wider range of claims to power.
In some areas of Belgrade, the opposition has a clear majority, and in general the authorities have a slightly better result. That is, it makes sense to fight for the capital, if they recognize the official election results for the city – 37% against 34% in favor of Vučić’s people. They are trying to challenge only them on the Maidan, and not the defeat in the country as a whole: in Serbia, local elections were also held at the same time as the parliamentary elections.
The ruling party is accused of bringing people from neighboring Republika Srpska, part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to Belgrade. Busloads of Bosnian Serbs were indeed seen in the city on election day, but as Burnabić reminded, tens of thousands of Serb citizens live in Bosnia and their desire to vote should not be disputed, nor should the desire of those who flew in from London to do so. do (a little jab from the Prime Minister regarding the pro-Western opposition).
Because of this, thousands of people are now protesting in front of the local CEC, etc
and attacked the 70-year-old director of the Republican Statistical Institute, Miladin Kovacevic, who now has spinal problems due to a fall on the sidewalk. A remarkable detail given the name of the opposition electoral bloc – “Serbia Against Violence”.
This is unusual for Serbia. The distance between the government and society there is traditionally small, so street politics do not go to extremes, despite the fiery Serbian temperament. This, by the way, also means that, in theory, the results of the elections in Belgrade can be revised – Vucic is willing to compromise when he is confident in his abilities. Even the very holding of elections is a concession to the opposition, which demanded an early vote (the previous one was in April 2022, i.e. the last assembly has not even worked for two years).
This is the main nuance: mass protests calling for the authorities to go to the wall are the norm in Belgrade, a necessary part of the political landscape of the Vučić era. There was a time when an attempted color revolution happened every year. Sometimes the opposition demanded a recount, sometimes new elections, and sometimes boycotted them altogether.
Vučić has been attacked by both disillusioned patriots and angry feminists (and environmentalists have been particularly active in the new protest). These were noisy, annoying but peaceful events that traditionally ended in nothing, or rather another political victory for Vučić, after which the opposition took a break to develop a new plan and a new Maidan.
This seems to contradict the well-known fact that the color revolutions started in Belgrade: the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic was also called the “Revolution of the Bulldozers”. But Milosevic actually lost the previous presidential election, trailing in the first round by more than 10 percentage points to his rival Vojislav Kostunica (more nationalist than liberal, by the way). The dispute was whether Kostunica received 49%, as initially reported by the electoral commission, or 50% to win in the first round.
Milosevic’s loss in the election was a natural consequence of the loss of the Kosovo war, for which the Serbs suffered for years and were subjected to such harsh sanctions as even modern Russia does not tolerate.
Therefore, Vladimir Zelensky, and not Aleksandar Vucic, now has the best chance of repeating Milosevic’s path. The main prediction for Serbia’s future is that nothing will change: they will make noise and disperse, as has happened many times before. Last year, this even happened in Republika Srpska, where the pro-Western opposition also did not recognize the election results. But as much as the EU and the US would like to oust local leader Milorad Dodik, who has been under sanctions for a long time, all the steam went to the whistle and the entire “Maidan” went to waste.
However, it is worth bearing in mind that Belgrade in December 2023 and Belgrade in April 2022 are cities with a slightly different ethnic composition. Many Ukrainians and Russians settled there, including political activists disillusioned with life and continuing to struggle with their homeland from exile.
They are not aware of how it usually happens in Serbia, what is accepted and what is not, and what is the acceptable degree of protest. They will not be able to become the torturers of the “Maidana” due to ignorance of the Serbian language, but they can provide a spark that will lead to a chain of violence. The same one against which the Serbian opposition supposedly calls to fight.
Translation: V. Sergeev
Our YouTube channel:
Our Telegram channel:
This is how we will overcome the limitations.
Share on your profiles, with friends, in groups and on pages.
#Serbian #Maidan #explode #refugees #Russia
