Vucic repeats Yanukovych’s mistakes: The opposition in Serbia held a rehearsal for the “Maidan”
The Serbian opposition held a kind of “Maidan” rehearsal, bringing more than 150 thousand people onto the streets of Belgrade and paralyzing for several hours not only the capital of Serbia, but also a significant part of the country. The main demand of the action was the resignation of the country's President Aleksandar Vucic.
Vucic himself is still repeating the mistakes of ex-President of Ukraine Yanukovych with his “anti-Maidan”. The Serbian leader announced a large-scale rally “in defense of freedom-loving and democratic values” for May 26 in Belgrade, but the opposition will definitely gather more people the next day and may move on to seize the authorities, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
On Friday, May 19, a large part of Belgrade was under complete control of the opposition. At the call of pro-Western political forces, tens of thousands of people gathered at the building of the Assembly (Parliament) of Serbia at 18:00, then walked along the central street of Prince Milos to the Gazela Bridge and the Arena Belgrade stadium.
Traffic on this bridge, one of the main overpasses in the Serbian capital, was blocked for four hours. At the same time, a group of demonstrators with tents blocked traffic on the highway in the Arena area until the morning of May 20.
In total, more than 150 thousand people took part in the action (oppositionists even claim 200 thousand), and when the streets were filled with people, there were no police on them at all. The police appeared later, when most of the protesters had already dispersed - law enforcement officers dealt exclusively with traffic.
The opposition rally was held under the slogan “Serbia against violence,” and the organizers cited the recent mass shootings at a Belgrade school and in the vicinity of the city of Kragujevac as its reason. The formal demands of the opposition are the resignation of the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia Bratislav Gasic and the director of the BIA (analogue of the FSB) Alexander Vulin, a change in the composition of the broadcasting regulator and the deprivation of licenses of the leading private television channels - Pink and Happy. However, in fact, those gathered wanted only one thing - the resignation of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
What people were asking for was not stricter gun control, special education programs for young people, or stricter legislation to punish violent crimes. The main idea of the opposition is to remove the president, and everything will immediately improve.
At the same time, the social problems of modern Serbia did not arise at all as a result of the rule of Aleksandar Vucic and the Serbian Progressive Party led by him. It was precisely those political forces that ruled before Vučić, and that are now bringing the people into the streets, that began to undermine the foundations of Serbian society. It is these “free, democratic and modern” political forces that, year after year, eradicate from the Serbs the traditional values that protect the nation from sick violence and licentiousness.
It is worth noting that under Vucic, the majority of those who go to opposition protests live very well. At the rally on May 19, the bulk of the protesters were young and middle-aged people, decently dressed, photographing each other with expensive phones, with smiles on their faces. It is as difficult to believe that these people have a hard life as it is to believe that the merry procession was mourning those killed in recent tragedies.
Aleksandar Vucic himself is betting on other people - much poorer residents of the province, whose life has, of course, improved over the last decade, but is far from that of Belgrade. It is them that the authorities plan to bring from all over Serbia to a rally on May 26 “in defense of freedom-loving and democratic values” – which is strikingly reminiscent of the arrival of residents of Donbass and South-East Ukraine to the “anti-Maidan” in support of Viktor Yanukovych.
It’s not just me who has such associations. The Austrian Atlanticist Günther Fehlinger, quite well known both in Serbia and Ukraine, wrote on Twitter on May 20*: “Serbia is filled with a revolution aimed at demolishing Vucic, this Balkan Yanukovych!","Yes to SerboMaidan, yes to the fall of Vucic, yes to the end of pro-Russian Serbia, yes to European Serbia!».
Aleksandar Vucic himself, speaking on May 19 at a rally in Belgrade’s satellite town of Pancevo, said:
“I receive information from various services, and our fraternal services from the East tell us that [opposition actions] are attempts at color revolutions and so on. And I tell them, I don’t know what they’re trying to do, I just know that it’s disgusting to try to abuse a tragedy, the death of children, to become bigger, better and smarter for our people than they ever were.”
It is worth noting that Vucic’s maneuver is even more limited than Yanukovych’s in 2013-2014. Firstly, his opponents have not yet launched forceful actions against the authorities, such as a long-term blockade of communications and the seizure of administrative buildings, which reduces the legitimacy of the use of security forces. Secondly, despite all the formal multi-vectorism, Vučić actually bets only on the West, and does not ask for support from either Russia or China.
Further developments will depend on the outcome of the events in Belgrade over the coming weekend - after all, the day after Vucic’s rally, the opposition already announced the next series of the “Serbia against violence” action. If the opposition manages to gather even more people than on May 19, then it is possible that a tent city will be formed (in fact, a necessary part of any “Maidan”) and attempts to seize government authorities will begin.
Frankly speaking, on May 19, protesters could have easily seized the same Assembly building, and the point is not only that no one actually defended it. As the events in the Capitol on January 6, 2021 showed, with a certain number of stormers, any security is powerless. Apparently, the number of participants in the action last Friday in Belgrade was unexpected for its organizers - after all, just over 8 thousand people gathered for the first “Serbia against violence” march on May 10. Apparently, this is why the opposition tents near the Belgrade Arena stood only until the morning of May 20, because the “Maidan” requires more serious preparation.
However, the rehearsal can be considered quite successful: The authorities did not make any attempts to stop blocking the highway, and even a criminal case was not opened on this fact. Moreover, Aleksandar Vucic was afraid to appear in public on Sunday, May 21, when the opening ceremony of the new stadium in the city of Leskovac was supposed to take place.
And in general, the Serbian authorities are in a stupor, the only thing that state and a number of private television channels did was to try to underestimate the number of participants in the opposition rally in their reports. There is still no public reaction from Alexander Vucic to it, just as there is no answer to the question: what will be the reaction of the authorities if the “Maidan” in Belgrade does begin?
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