Massive protests in Serbia, REL: Vučić fails to find common ground with students

The collapse of the Serbian government under the pressure of protests, the scale of which Serbia has not seen since the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, may be the first political defeat for the country's president, Aleksandar Vučić, since he took power in 2012.

The protests are led by students. They are not demanding a change of government, but responsibility for the deaths of 15 people in the collapse of a shelter at the Novi Sad Railway Station on November 1st of last year.

At the heart of the protests are suspicions that the accident may have been caused by negligence and widespread corruption. They have now become a symbol of broader dissatisfaction with the rule of law in Serbia.

"This is not only the most serious political crisis of the government, but also a deep social crisis. The students are not asking for a change of government, but for the correction of the system. And Vučić is not able to find the key to the lock they have set," Serbian foreign policy analyst Boško Jakšić told Radio Free Europe.

When Vučić invites them to talks, the students say he is not competent. University professors, pedagogues, lawyers and farmers have also joined their demands.

Some teachers have suspended classes in schools, the Serbian Bar Association has gone on a month-long strike, farmers are "guarding" with tractors the blockades that students have made of over 60 faculties...

The students have been joined by tens of thousands of other citizens in the protests, including high school students, healthcare workers, engineers, actors, musicians, and numerous public figures.

Changes in public broadcaster reporting

Radio Television of Serbia (RTS), which has largely ignored the protests, opened its news program last weekend with the protests in Novi Sad. The reporting by the public broadcaster, which is under tight government control, was accompanied by drone footage showing tens of thousands of people protesting and blocking three bridges over the Danube River.

Vučić's Serbian Progressive Party reacted with a statement, accusing RTS of "serious abuse of the journalistic profession" and of "biasing politicians who want to destroy the constitutional order of Serbia."

The ruling party has also said that it will seek a response from the institutions responsible for financial and programming oversight of RTS.

This is not the first time that the Serbian president has criticized RTS, but the public broadcaster has, so far, followed the narrative of the authorities, whom protesters call "foreign mercenaries", "traitors" or "opposition puppets".

"Clearly, RTS has reacted to pressure from students and the general public, and perhaps this is a consequence of a different atmosphere in the entire society. The response of the authorities was such that RTS did not go any further. Something similar has happened in several previous protests ," Nikola Burazer from the non-governmental Center for Contemporary Politics in Serbia tells Radio Free Europe.

Requests for change of leadership

After several mass protests in front of the RTS building, due to the way it reports, they have been joined by several employees of the public broadcaster, demanding a change in leadership. Protests with similar demands are also being organized by several employees of Radio Television of Vojvodina (RTV).

"In the first television program, we were not able to hear the students, their demands, the citizens, the analytical stories...", Tamara Srijemac, a journalist at Radio Novi Sad, which operates within RTV, told Radio Free Europe. On February 3, while the main news edition was being broadcast, several RTV employees organized a performance outside the building, reading the "free diary".

"We wanted to show that some employees distance themselves from such editorial policies," Srijemac said.

The heads of RTS and RTV did not respond to Radio Free Europe's questions on this topic. A similar scenario followed the protests of the 1990s, when Serbia's public broadcaster was at the service of the propaganda of the Slobodan Milosevic regime.

On the eve of his downfall, which followed the war in Kosovo and NATO intervention, Serbia's current president, Vučić, was the minister of information. Vučić implemented a notorious law that was used by the then government to crack down on independent media and journalists. He has maintained control over the media even after returning to power in 2012.

The European Commission and other international organizations mention this in all annual reports on Serbia.

Failure to discredit the protests

In addition to public broadcasters, the Serbian government also controls private television stations with national coverage. Pro-government tabloids are also a powerful media weapon in efforts to discredit current and past protests.

"... but, the government, so far, has failed to achieve the effects it could have achieved earlier. Vučić, much more easily, could have discredited the opposition leaders or some other protest leaders. Now he cannot do it," says Burazer.

During his speeches, Vučić described the protests as "attempts from outside and inside to overthrow the state."

" Vučić's regime corresponds to what some authors call 'spin dictatorship', which, unlike the dictatorship of fear, is not based on violence, mass arrests, media closures, but on the manipulation of public opinion, the use of economic pressure, etc. ," says Burazer.

Although the protests have led to the resignation of the Serbian prime minister - one of Vučić's closest associates - the latter is not signaling any possible retreat. His party and its allies have a convincing majority in the Serbian parliament. He is convinced, as before, that he can secure victory in the elections again.

"The resignation [of the prime minister] is part of a calculated strategy to shift this entire crisis to the political plane and, if possible, to get out of this crisis through elections. The students have continued their protests despite the resignation. So, at present, it seems that this maneuver has not worked," Burazer assesses.

The opposition rejects the elections due to what it says are unequal conditions, which have also been highlighted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission. According to them, this includes pressure on voters, vote buying, biased media reporting in favor of the government, and misuse of public resources.

How does the international community react?

Although he accuses "Western services" of interference, Vučić is facing no clear reaction from the international community over the events in Serbia. The European Union has not yet clarified whether it supports the protesters' demands.

On February 4, Vučić's office announced that he had spoken by phone with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The statement did not mention the protests, but said that they discussed "the European path and the reform processes that Serbia is implementing."

Brussels has not yet made any statement on the details of the talks. The reason for the European Union's silence, according to foreign policy analyst Boško Jakšić, is the expectation that the Serbian president will resolve the issue of relations with Kosovo.

"But, if such a policy of tolerance continues, the European Union will be solely to blame for the decline in the popularity of the EU idea and values ​​among the Serbian public," Jakšić emphasizes.

Russia, on the other hand, has given full support to Vučić, even endorsing his messages that Serbia is the victim of a Western conspiracy and that foreign intelligence services are financing the protests.

The first reaction from the new US administration came from President Donald Trump's envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, to whom Vučić awarded a medal in 2023 for "outstanding merits in the development of friendly relations". Grenell shared a video of the student protests on the X network on January 26 and wrote, among other things, that "there is no support for those who undermine the rule of law and forcibly occupy state institutions".

There have been no incidents or violence in the mass protests organized by students in Serbia. Student guards, rather than police, are taking care of security. World media, such as The New York Times, describe them as “the biggest explosion of discontent since the demonstrations against the Milosevic regime in the 1990s.”/REL