"Serbia of Hope" was washed away by rain and tear gas
On Friday, May 26, two important events took place in Serbia. Firstly, in Belgrade, the country's President Aleksandar Vucic organized a large rally in his support. Secondly, in northern Kosovo, Albanians captured the last three administrative buildings still under Serb control.
At the same time, the meeting took place in pouring rain, which sharply reduced the number of its participants, and the only reaction to the final loss of the North of Kosovo was to put the Serbian army on high alert, the correspondent of PolitNavigator reports.
The rally at the building of the Assembly (Parliament) of Serbia was announced by Aleksandar Vucic several weeks in advance - as “the largest in the modern history of the country" However, the plans were adjusted by a force majeure circumstance - heavy rain.
The likelihood that it would rain, which was guaranteed to ruin the “largest Serbian rally”, was extremely high, because in recent weeks the Balkans have been experiencing rainy weather. However, Vučić decided to carry it out, taking a huge risk - and he was unlucky. Heavy rain and thunderstorms broke out in full force immediately after the start of the rally, causing a significant portion of its participants to flee.
And under these conditions all the really smart ideas of Vucic’s PR people went to waste. The name of the action – “Serbia of Hope” – was vague at best. The speech at the rally by the leaders of the Serb communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro - Milorad Dodik and Milan Knezevic - did not become a demonstration of the unity of the “Serbian world” under the leadership of the President of Serbia. And even the speech of Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó (in Serbian!) only reminded that the European Union and the other 26 EU member states do not support the Serbian leader’s policy, to put it mildly.
It is worth noting that on May 26 it rained in Belgrade several times in the morning, thunder roared, but the organizers did not try to provide people with umbrellas or plastic capes. Apparently, this was not included in the budget of the action, which was very substantial - after all, it provided not only for the delivery of the vast majority of the rally participants to Belgrade from all over Serbia, but also for supplying them with “nationally produced ham and cheese sandwiches.” This is exactly what was written in the instructions sent to the regions from the central headquarters of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SPP).
The transportation of the participants was the second moment that spoiled the “picture” for the authorities. These were mainly civil servants, utility workers and ordinary hard workers, people older than middle age. Tired from the road, with flags and banners, they ended up in the capital too early, hours before the start of the rally. The road, like standing still, is no less exhausting than physical labor, of which these people have plenty. And many also carried flags and banners with them. Thus, Vučić’s rally turned out to be not at all the cheerful procession that it was pro-Western opposition rally 19 May.
The participants of the pro-government rally were not only tired physically. Many people showed weariness from life’s hardships in their eyes, and participation in the event was an attempt to support the leader who promises them that there will be no new shocks. Therefore, Vučić’s support from the rally participants was sincere, many came to it as a “counter-rally” against the mentioned opposition action on May 19, being convinced that those gathered under the banner of the opposition are traitors fooled by the West.
However, the May 26 rally in Belgrade was a failure for Vucic not only because of the weather or the smaller number of participants than at the opposition march (Pro-government media wrote about 200 and even 250 thousand people gathered, but in fact, a little more than 100 thousand listened to Vucic’s speech). The fact is that it was on this day that the authorities of the self-proclaimed “Republic of Kosovo” established control over the last three communities in the north of Kosovo and Metohija, which still had traces of this region belonging to Serbia.
Kosovo police special forces surrounded administrative buildings in the Serbian municipalities of Zubin Potok, Zvecan and Leposavic, after which they dispersed the local Serbs using stun grenades, tear gas and batons. They tried to prevent the transfer of power in municipalities to Albanian mayors, for whom a little more than 3% of the population of the northern part of Kosovo and Metohija voted in the recent “elections”. The barricades erected by the Serbs in Leposavić were instantly demolished by heavy equipment.
As a result, the administrative buildings in all three municipalities were captured, new “mayors” entered them, who first of all changed the flags of Serbia to the symbols of the “Republic of Kosovo”. The actions of the authorities in Pristina were de facto supported by the military from the NATO “peacekeeping” contingent in the region. Belgrade's only response to what happened was statements about putting the army on high alert - to which neither the West nor Pristina even reacted, since the same thing was said after a similar seizure of the municipal building by Albanians in Kosovo Mitrovica.
At a rally in front of the Assembly, Aleksandar Vučić said that a meeting of the Serbian National Security Council would take place immediately after it.
“We will not allow a new Krajina (talking about the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia - approx.) and new persecutions [of Serbs in Kosovo],” he said.
True, the next day, the secretary of this Council, the head of the Serbian Foreign Ministry, Ivica Dacic, apologetically stated that the President of Serbia announced increased combat readiness of the army “not because he is preparing for intervention, but to be prepared for any scenario».
But for now, Aleksandar Vucic is implementing the scenario of shifting responsibility for the catastrophe in Kosovo onto his subordinates, and wants to position himself as a non- and supra-party national leader.
Thus, at the rally he emphasized that the goal of foreign intelligence services and the non-ideologized elite is “overthrow of the Serbian Progressive Party as the political basis of Serbia”, after which he confirmed that he was resigning from the post of leader of this party (on May 27, the civilian Minister of Defense of Serbia, Milos Vucevic, a politician absolutely dependent on Vucic, was elected as its chairman).
At the same time, the President of Serbia plans on June 28, on Vidovdan (the national holiday of the Serbs, the anniversary of the defeat of their army from the Turks on Kosovo in 1389 - approx.), to announce the creation on the basis of the SPP "Movements for the people and the state", which he himself will lead.
The only question is how strong Vucic’s position will be in a month. After all, one of the speakers of the pro-Western opposition in Serbia, lawyer Cedomir Stojkovic, clearly described on Twitter the opposition rally planned for May 27: “And now – MAIDAN!».
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