Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic would be wise to listen to the demands of protesters who have taken to the streets of the Serbian capital three weeks in a row, angry at his rule, opposition leader and former Belgrade mayor Dragan Djilas says.
For three consecutive Saturdays, tens of thousands of people have marched through Belgrade in demonstrations triggered by a brutal assault on opposition politician Borko Stefanovic in the southern town of Krusevac on November 23.
The protesters say the attack, in which Stefanovic and a number of party colleagues were set upon by unknown assailants and beaten with wooden sticks as they headed to a party event, is indicative of an atmosphere of aggression under Vucic, whom opponents accuse of monopolising power.
“Any clever statesman, if he sees tens of thousands of people on the streets, he would listen to them,” Djilas said in an interview with BIRN.
“He is the man behind everything that happens in this country so he knows, when heads are being broken, that it really happened but also who did it,” said Djilas. “And he also knows that all that hatred and the aggression comes from the people for whom he is both head of the party and the state.”
Scant state media coverage
The protests have been largely dismissed by authorities and participants say the public broadcaster, RTS, should give them fairer coverage.
Organisers of the protest, a movement calling itself ‘Protest Against Dictatorship’, are calling on RTS to provide more balanced coverage of the political situation in the country and for the dismissal of Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic, accusing him of presiding over the “criminalisation of society” and of insulting the protesters.
Police arrested three people over the attack on Borko Stefanovic but they have not been charged and on December 25 Serbian media reported that they were released.
Speaking the same day to Pink Television, Vucic said he was ready to listen to the protesters but was also prepared to go to the polls. The protest organisers responded by inviting Vucic to the next protest scheduled for December 29.
Djilas was doubtful he would turn up. “I don’t know what he would be able to hear that he didn’t already know,” he told BIRN.
Djilas, a former leader of the Democratic Party, heads an alliance of opposition parties and organisations from both left and right of Serbia’s political spectrum. Djilas told BIRN he plans to form his own party in February.
Hard line on Kosovo
The alliance, in its platform, has taken a hard line on the issue of Kosovo, Serbia’s former southern province that declared independence in 2008 and is now recognised by more than 100 countries around the world. Serbia, backed by Russia, opposes its statehood but is under pressure from the European Union to settle relations with Pristina if Belgrade is to one day join the bloc.
Read more The Balkaninsight
