Serbia's PM Vucevic steps down after months of anti-corruption protests

[solo@slrpnk.net]

Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic announced his resignation on Tuesday following months of mass demonstrations triggered by the fatal collapse of a train station roof in November, which critics have blamed on rampant government corruption.

Novi Sad Mayor Milan Djuric also will step down on Tuesday, Vucevic said.

[accountmaker@slrpnk.net]

Vucevic said the immediate cause for his quitting was an attack on a female student in Novi Sad early Tuesday by assailants allegedly from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. Vucevic said that “whenever it seems there is hope to return to social dialogue, to talk ... it’s like an invisible hand creates a new incident and tensions mount again.”

For those wondering on the nature of the attack: students were putting stickers on objects in the city calling for protests this Saturday, then two guys from the ruling party (read: hooligans) came at them with baseball bats, broke one girl's jaw, and chased the rest with a car.

These are hopefully the final stages of a cancerous regime coming to an end. Keep in mind that the students didn't ask or care about any resignations or elections, they have 4 concrete requests that, if fulfilled, will lead to most of the ruling party going to prison. This is just replacing one puppet with another.

But we can still nontheless rejoice in the government collapsing.

[solo@slrpnk.net]

Without knowing much about current politics in Serbia (or having actual trust or hope in governmental politics in general) I wanted to ask you: is there any interesting opposing politicians/parties/coalitions to your knowledge?

[accountmaker@slrpnk.net]

That's a tough one. First, the current state of politics here is as follows:

The main character here is president Aleksandar Vucic. He was the head of the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska Napredna Stranka, SNS), the party that has been in power since 2012, until a few years ago. He's officially not the head anymore, but he still holds rallies and campaigns for SNS, even though he's not on any lists or positions during election campaigns. The president has a ceremonial role according to the Serbian constitution, but you can see him almost every day (I'm not even joking) on TV answering questions on everything from infrastructure projects to how many peas and beans we have in stock (not joking). Not a single institution is doing its job because everything has to go through him.

The party has over 700k members (more than 10% of the population) because if you want to hold a job in any public position, you have to be a member of the party, attend rallies, vote for SNS (with photo evidence that you did it, even though that's illegal) , otherwise you get fired. Almost all the media in Serbia is SNS propaganda. So, given that they hold all the media, institutions, governmental positions and decide whether a large chunk of the population will have food tomorrow, elections are kinda meaningless in places outside of Belgrade and maybe Novi Sad, because they can do whatever they want with no reprecussions. For example, in 2023 they literally brought 10k people from Bosnia to vote in local Belgrade elections, swiftly giving them citizenship and registering them where they could. You had apartments of like 30m^2 that had 60 people registered as living there. They also moved people from other places to Belgrade so that they could vote there, and then they re-registered them back so that they could vote also back home. This was all proven without a shadow of a doubt, and absolutely nothing was done about it. So the prime minister resigning is honestly almost meaningless because there are no institutions or ministers in Serbia, there is only Vucic.

As for the opposition, on the one hand you can't blame them too much because there's not much they can legally do, but on the other hand they often screw up whatever they can. They used to take control of protests that emerged, led people to walk up and down all over Serbia for months, and then nothing. In 2023 we had the huge protests with the oposition parties leading them, and an election was held in December. The elections were a scandal fest as they always are, but even with those 10k Bosnians, SNS did not manage to get a majority in Belgrade, and they had to hold elections again. It was a huge moment since it was the first time SNS did not manage to win something (keep in mind that every city, every municipality, every local body is controlled by SNS), and people very actually pretty hyped that Belgrade will be freed. And then, in a move probably unseen in the history of parliamentary politics, half the oposition decided to boycott the elections. They said that the conditions for fair elections were not met and they would not participate, but only in Belgrade and Nis (the third biggest city), they would participate in other cities. That was one of the biggest wtf moves ever recorded, and ofc SNS won almost everything in Serbia again (one municipality in Nis had the oposition win I think). So they are either disliked ("they're all the same" etc), or seen as incompetent by the majority.

One idea that has been floating in the public is for the students to form a government by appointing the professors they deem best suited for a transitional government, and then turn the country upside down and punish the members of SNS for everything they did, and then hope for the best that we will have new, younger people emerge. This is a very special time because very many people are really sympathetic towards the students, as they should be since they have been nothing short of excelent in almost every respect. The majority really just want the whole system and political class to burn down and to start again, but I think that's the case almost everywhere.

Sorry for the long post, just thought I'd clarify the situation here since this is hitting the news in a lot of places.

tl;dr - Some opposition parties are at best alright, but non really inspire anyone. Ideally the students will lead us out of this mess into a new era, but in any case the number one priority is to fill the prisons to max capacity with the mafia running this country.

[benjhm@sopuli.xyz]

Thanks for this explanation, better than anything i read in media. However, is it really plausible for the student-professor transitional government plan to happen ? (Maybe recent events in Bangladesh inspire hope, although that's a very different country). If they don't get this , but there is instead a "routine" election under SNS management, would most opposition participate or boycott again ? I guess like many countries in europe, the mood in villages is rather different from in cities ?

[solo@slrpnk.net]

I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to explain all this.

[accountmaker@slrpnk.net]

The PM's resignation is thought to have happened in order to force new elections and thus kill the momentum. The fact that they can win any election was used almost every time we had unrests (we had elections in 2012, 2014, 2017, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024 and now they want 2025).

All relevant opposition parties agreed (they very rarely agree on anything) that there will be no elections. Everyone is in agreement with that: prison time, a transitional government to enable free elections, and then we get elections. Who will form the transitional government? I'm not sure, but the atmosphere is generally that this has to be the end of SNS and all prominent members, nothing less is acceptable.

As for villages/cities: rural areas get most of their information from TV, and the few non-propaganda channels that exist are not even an option in remote areas, so a lot of them don't even know anything from media besides "some students are protesting". But these protests were held in places we would never expect (someone joked that places are rising up that didn't rise up even against the Ottomans), so I'm not sure how are these events seen in remote villages.

Funny that you mentioned Bangladesh, because I remember reading about it being the "first gen z revolution" and thought how this could be the second. Students from Belgrade announced that they will walk to Novi Sad tomorrow to join the huge protests announced on Saturday, where again a bridge will be blocked for 24h (and another 2 for 3h each)