Serbian government fell this week when Prime Minister Miloš Vučević announced his resignation on Tuesday. It was the latest and, so far, the most significant political consequence of a student-led movement which emerged after the Novi Sad tragedy in November. The students, however, are sticking to their original demands, which did not include the resignation of the government, and show no intention of backing down.
In the early hours of Tuesday, 28 January, armed men physically assaulted a group of students in Novi Sad. A young woman was seriously hurt, requiring hospitalisation. The attackers emerged from the headquarters of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which they were supposedly guarding from the students.
The outrage caused by this latest attack was the immediate cause of the resignation of Prime Minister Vučević. This did not change the political balance of power in Serbia, as Aleksandar Vučić still occupies the office of President and SNS commands the majority in the parliament. Nevertheless, such drastic concessions by those in power have rarely been seen before.
“Since the return of multi-party politics in 1990, no government fell due to internal pressures. This is the first time that internal factors led to the fall of the government, which is an unbelievable success”, Boban Stojanović, political scientist, says for European Western Balkans.
He adds, however, that students seem far from satisfied with this outcome, and that they only seem to be gathering steam.
A social movement demanding justice
The movement started to form in late November when students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade organized a blockade of their faculty after they had been beaten at a street protest commemorating Novi Sad victims. They were soon joined by all faculties of Serbia’s biggest universities, in a blockade which is still ongoing.
With widespread suspicions regarding the institutional failures during the reconstruction of the railway station in Novi Sad, whose collapse killed 15 people, students demanded the release of all documentation related to the project. They also demanded sanctions for all individuals who attacked students since November.
The students soon started receiving wide-ranging support from people across the country, including distinctive social groups such as farmers and teachers. Opposition parties have also supported the students and their demands albeit from a distance, since the students insisted on not being associated with any political party.
According to an opinion poll carried out by CRTA in December, 61% of the citizens of Serbia supported students. While the country has already seen highly attended protests in recent years, the gatherings in support of the students have shattered all records both in terms of attendance and the number of locations they took place.
On 30 January, hundreds of students from Belgrade started a march to Novi Sad in support of their colleagues, who are organizing a protest on 1 February to mark three months since the tragedy. Belgrade students reached Novi Sad on 31 January. On the way, they were greeted by numerous citizens of all ages, some visibly emotional.
“What differentiates these protests from others is that a good part of the people in Serbia are (now) bound by the universal value of justice. It is an extremely strong driving force”, assesses Boban Stojanović.
Now that the movement has caused the resignation of the government, the question of its further trajectory and impact on Serbian politics remains wide open.
Commitment to original requests or formulation of new ones?
As of the end of January, there is still no official confirmation that all students’ requests have been met, especially regarding the publication of the documentation. Since mid-December, the government claimed on several occasions that the entire documentation had been published, which turned out not to be the case.
Vujo Ilić, a research fellow at the University of Belgrade, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, believes that, if the movement remains committed to its original goals, the key factor shaping its trajectory could be its approach to the legal proceedings surrounding the collapse of the canopy in Novi Sad.
“Given the complexity of legal processes, this will take time. If all other demands are met, the students could choose to end the blockades and establish a monitoring mechanism for the proceedings”, Ilić says for our portal.
However, he adds, the past three months have brought many new developments, and the students could also decide to reassess their demands and inject a new dynamic into the movement.
So far, there have been no serious discussions on formulating new demands. The students have established so-called plenaries at each faculty, ad-hoc institutions which are steering the protests and which are expected to have the final word on this issue.
Meanwhile, it turns out that the original demands were justified, as the release of the documents unveiled a series of new information about the reconstruction of the railway station. Some of them, such as an increase in the amount of money awarded to the contracting partners, raise suspicions of potential corruption. There has been no reaction from the judiciary to these findings so far.
New concessions should be expected
A further boost to the students and a challenge for the government was the fact that multiple high schools in the country joined the blockades in December. In response, the government made a decision to end the school semester a week earlier than planned.
The society held its breath on 20 January, when a new school semester was supposed to begin. While the semester did start as planned in the majority of schools, in some cases, especially in large urban areas, teachers and parents decided to partially or fully suspend classes in support of the students.
As of the end of January, all schools in the country are still not working properly. Universities have been closed since December and the solution does not seem to be on the horizon.
“Every new day represents further problems for the government because children and the youth are not going to classes, which is an enormous pressure…Therefore, I would not be surprised if it comes to further concessions, such as the announcement of the increase of the state budget for education, which was announced on Thursday”, Boban Stojanović says.
He adds that, whenever the student movement decides to end the protests, it has already changed the perception of a large number of people and political circumstances for the long term.
“Whether the circumstances will change through elections sooner or later, whether through further resignations of officials, pressure on the prosecutor’s office to arrest some high-ranking officials, even the former Prime Minister, will be a question of how much they (the government) will resist it, but every new day in which schools and faculties do not work is a serious pressure”, Stojanović says.
Early elections – a risky option for the ruling party
Serbia has seen many anti-government protests in recent years, but Vučić and SNS were able to sit out most of them, offering strategic concessions here and there. This time, however, nothing they tried managed to even slow the protests down, if not stop them completely.
After Vučević’s resignation, the ruling party stands before a choice – whether to appoint a new government or go to the polls early. Opposition parties have rejected the possibility of participating in early elections unless the current, much-criticized electoral conditions improve. The opposition already boycotted the 2020 parliamentary elections, leading to an unrepresentative parliament.
Vujo Ilić assesses that calling for new elections could allow the ruling party to leverage its advantage in resources, from media control to clientelistic networks, to reassert its dominance.
“However, this move may be too risky for President Vučić, who prefers to call snap elections only when he has a clear upper hand”, Ilić points out.
Instead, he adds, he may also try to de-escalate the situation by appointing a formally independent new Prime Minister.
Dušan Milenković, a political consultant, also believes that the elections are a bad option for the government because it would not solve the crisis.
“There are two options in the event of calling new elections – either the students say that they are not interested in the elections, in which case I do not see which (opposition) party would dare to run in the elections, or the students say let’s all go to the elections, in which case the government should be extremely concerned”, Milenković says for European Western Balkans.
The other option, he adds, is for the current composition of the parliament to vote for a new government.
“This could either be a transitional government, i.e. composed of non-regime actors, whose task would be to fulfil all demands and prepare the conditions for free and fair elections, or it could be a new SNS government, which would have zero impact on resolving the political crisis”, Milenković concludes.
Opposition parties, which have been marginalized throughout the protests, have insisted on a transitional government which would prepare fair elections as a way out of the crisis. So far, there have been no indicators that Vučić would give up the levers of power to that extent – unless, of course, he is forced to do so by the students.