DEruconts almost five months, Serbia is experiencing a vast movement of protest of power. The demonstrations broke out in November 2024, when part of the roof of a new station collapsed in the city of Novi Sad, causing the death of 16 people. Many Serbs have seen a link between drama and ambient corruption, accusing civil servants of having made few cases of compulsory security standards.
On March 15, several hundred thousand people went peacefully in Belgrade. It was the largest rally organized in the country since the monster demonstrations of the 1990s against the regime of the Slobodan Milosevic tyrant (1941-2006). Very mobilized, students do not disarm and block universities, but also, on April 14, the headquarters of Serbian radio-television, to claim a more impartial coverage of their movement.
Never has the Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic has been confronted with a protest of such magnitude since the start of his mandate in 2017. Western leaders should follow the situation closely, or even prepare for the possibility of a regime change. Under pressure, Prime Minister, Milos Vacevic, resigned at the end of January, and the president has just appointed his successor, Duro Macut, a neophyte doctor in politics.
Like most authoritarian leaders, Vucic is aware of the threat that these demonstrations pose over his power and will do everything to put an end to it, including making concessions. He undoubtedly has in mind all the popular movements that have changed power in Serbia in the past. This year also marks 25e anniversary of the “Bulldozers Revolution” who overthrew Slobodan Milosevic.
The formation of Vucic, the Progressive Serbian party (SNS, nationalist right), had risen to power in the wake of the gigantic demonstrations of 2011 which denounced corruption under the former presidency of the socialist Boris Tadic (2004-2012). Vucic will do his best to avoid knowing the same fate.
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Source: Lemonde