“The student revolution is overthrowing the regime of Aleksandar Vučić,” writes the daily newspaper Danas from Belgrade. “Surrender wholeheartedly. Set aside cynicism and pessimism this time, because we deserve to be a nation of good and righteous people,” is the call in an article by journalist Jasmina Lukac.
The protests in Belgrade and Novi Sad, which turned into massive gatherings, led to the dismissal of Serbia’s Prime Minister, Miloš Vučević. Meanwhile, President Vučić promised to dismiss half of his government’s cabinet, accepting one of the students’ demands.
“Every revolution involves foreign interventions, but this one is so much our own that what other services can do is to record this experience, observe, and wait to see who and what will prevail in the end.”
“It’s true, the student plenary resembles more of a Soviet communist style, or rather a workers’ council, than a British Parliament. But it is also true that parliamentarism, as an invention originally British, is the empirical expression of negotiating and trading money by monarchs, lords, and the people. Here it’s different, our word is the Assembly, the root is gathering, the coming together, the readiness to stay with others, to be together to defend ourselves as free and equal people,” Danas writes.
Danas continues: “Now we can clearly see the picture, without layers of propaganda, of why and how the partisan revolution succeeded 80 years ago. Don’t believe those who lie that we are not a revolutionary people, attributing what happened back then to a mere mix of circumstances and historical events outside of our control. On the contrary, we are a people for revolution, understood not as a technique for changing the political system, but as our collective acts of struggle and victory over force and injustice.”
Therefore, let’s now surrender to the revolutionary moment, let’s participate in our history, but also in our collective emotion, which can be shared with all other people sensitive to freedom and justice. As the Slovenian group Laibach tells us, “Let’s make Serbia great again,” concludes the Danas article.
Serbia was engulfed by massive protests against corruption following the collapse of the train station roof in Novi Sad, which resulted in the deaths of 15 people.
