The Serbian student-led protests gathered over 100,000 people on Saturday for a massive peaceful street demonstration in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, and opposed warnings from the country’s mayhem, violating the warning that the mayhem has lost control over violence.
Saturday’s rally was the biggest pour in public dissatisfaction in Serbia in decades, preceded by President Alexander Wykic and his vast media equipment that protesters were planning violent attacks to trigger a “civil war” and take power.
Opposition politicians added to the foreshadowing mood by claiming they received information from the security services of Serbian security services to arrest Mr Vicz’s political rival.
However, Saturday’s rally began outside the council building in Belgrade, quickly engulfing the city centre, passing without a major incident. Supporters of President Vucic gathered in a park near Congress and threw stones at students. But they feared that the government would deploy war veterans and football hooligans associated with organized crime gangs to defeat protesters, like in the past.
Belgrade police said the protesters were numbered 107,000, and students from the University of Belgrade’s dramatic arts department helped organize the assembly and brought voter turnout to 800,000.
Speaking at a press conference at the end of Saturday, Vitic described the rally as “a massive protest with great negative energy against the authorities.” He said 56 people were injured and those seriously injured praised his security services for blocking what he said as a plan of violence.
His government “understands the message” from the protesters, he added. “And we’ll have to change ourselves.” While he has not shown what this change is, he says, “Citizens don’t want a revolution of color.” The term coined by the Kremlin is to describe a common uprising in former Soviet territories, such as Ukraine.
It appears that he had in mind that former Ukrainian president, Victor Janukovic, used brute force against protesters to cause his own downfall in 2014.
In neighbouring Hungary against Prime Minister Victor Orban, Wutic, who was also asked about the massive protests on Saturday, said the Hungarian and Serbian protests had “the same signatures.” He said this is a reference to his intermittent claim that the West is coordinating a campaign of anxiety over fallen populist leaders throughout the region.
The protests in Serbia have spread across the country, beginning in November after reaching a town that has voted heavily for Vucic in the past, killing 15 people after the collapse of a concrete canopy at a newly renovated railway station. Students and opposition politicians who dramatically protested in Congress last week by generating flares and smoke bombs, denounced the tragedy over the poor work of contractors linked to corrupt officials.
Students focus on a set of clear demands related to the disaster, including criminal prosecution for the responsible person and the firing of a minister who oversaw renovation projects, but Viuch’s political opponents in Congress have called for a “transition government” to oversee the new election.
Past elections held under the supervision of Serbia’s Progressive Party have been undermined by voter fraud and control of the government’s major television and news media, allowing it to almost silence the messages of opposition candidates. Vucic said he is willing to hold the elections but has ruled out “transitional governments” that include his opponents.
The protest has gained momentum and has gained much beyond the campus that has been barricaded for months, so it targets Wükic, who has been in power for 13 years, and many protesters are even asking for his removal and imprisonment.
“We’re going to arrest Vucic,” protesters chanted Saturday. “He’s finished,” read the signs some of them carried.
The Serbian political crisis, as President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner tackles a complex deal at Trump-branded luxury hotels in the capital center, raises a new US administration dilemma.
Under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the United States has been criticized by opposition politicians for trying to plead with Wykic from Serbia’s traditionally close partnership with Russia, and for being too soft to the Serbian president.
The Trump administration has shown no indication that it will lean away from Vicz. On Tuesday, Vicci met the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. Encouraged by President Trump’s dismantling of USAID, a financial group aid agency that recorded election fraud and other abuses, the Serbian president sent armed police last month to raid the Belgrade office of a non-governmental organisation that he accused of stealing his complaints.
