Since the outbreak of current mass protests throughout Serbia, “defence of Vojvodina from the separatist aspirations of some people” has become commonplace in the public speeches of the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić and his associates. The narrative was given particular visibility on 15 February, when the so-called “Declaration on Vojvodina” was adopted at the pro-government rally in the town of Sremska Mitrovica.
The document states that the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina is “an inseparable part of… the identity of modern Serbia, and just as Serbia does not exist without Vojvodina, so Vojvodina cannot exist outside Serbia”.
The topic of the status of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina within Serbia was extremely marginal in the public for a long time before the current revival by the ruling party, and there are no signs that there is any significant support for separatism among the local population. According to the 2022 census in 2011, 68% of Vojvodina’s inhabitants were Serbs, which was a slight increase compared to the 2011 census, while the rest were members of national minorities – Hungarian, Roma, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian…
According to the interlocutors of our portal, the government, embodied in Vučić, is trying to suppress student blockades and protests of citizens by using the narrative of Vojvodina separatism, in spite of the fact that the status of this province has not been mentioned during these protests at all.
The paradox becomes even greater given the fact that parties advocating for more “autonomy” are not even present in the current Assembly of Vojvodina because they did not manage to win enough votes in the last elections.
In the absence of political organisations that could be labelled as secessionists, the government has recently singled out several individuals, accusing them of pushing this agenda. Among them is Dinko Gruhonjić, a journalist and university professor from Novi Sad, who has already been a target of several smear campaigns in the pro-government media for his political views.
Another supposed separatist is a former Democratic Party official Goran Ješić, who has been politically inactive for several years, but who announced a possible return to politics after the outbreak of the current protests.
However, the prospects of Gruhonjić’s and Ješić’s future political influence, as well as actual positions on the status of Vojvodina, are unclear at best. Ješić has recently stated for Danas that he sees claims that he has been trying to secede Vojvodina from Serbia as “a classic media spin”.
Vučić: Separatists in Vojvodina want further disintegration of Serbia
“The advocates of Vojvodina separatism want the further disintegration of Serbia”, Aleksandar Vučić said at a rally held in Sremska Mitrovica (Vojvodina) on 15 February, on the same day as one of the largest student-led protests was organised in Kragujevac. The President of Serbia sent similar messages during his recent visit to the North Banat and Central Banat districts in Vojvodina.
Addressing the people in the town of Kikinda earlier this month, Vučić said that he would write the book entitled “How I Conquered the coloured revolution in Serbia”.
“Here in northern Serbia, they say that it is time to go back to the situation that existed before 1990… They just want Vojvodina to be as far away from Serbia as possible”, he claimed, while in Čoka municipality, Vučić stated that “Vojvodina was and still is a part of Serbia, and they can only dream of tearing up a part of our territory”.
Similarly, Miloš Vučević, outgoing Prime Minister, noted that “for the opposition politicians, who want the secession of Vojvodina, the current protests are an opportunity to put such plans on the table”.
“The protests are an opportunity for them to put these projects on the table. It has nothing to do with the tragedy in Novi Sad… They do not put it bluntly, but it is very cunning and dangerously wrapped in the envelope of the overall requirements”, Vučević told TV Pink.
Aleksandar Popov: The government deploys a “catch a thief” system and invents the threat of separatism
Commenting on the narrative of the Vučić’s government about Vojvodina, Aleksandar Popov, Director of the Center for Regionalism, based in Novi Sad, states for European Western Balkans that this is a method from the time when Slobodan Milošević was in power in Serbia.
“If the claim of the current government in Serbia is true that Vojvodina, where, according to the 2022 census, about 70% of Serbs live, wants to secede from Serbia, then Serbia is in a big trouble. However, this unprovoked hunt for separatists in Vojvodina and the adoption of the Declaration on Vojvodina at the rally in Sremska Mitrovica is a well-known method from Milošević’s era, which implies that you invent a problem that will divert attention from the real problem”, Aleksandar Popov explains.
As our interlocutor points out, the government operates according to the system “catch a thief” and the goal of the Declaration on Vojvodina is twofold – “on the one hand, it should draw attention from student protests to the fabricated threat from Vojvodina separatism, and on the other hand, it is a vicious intention to bring discord among the students themselves, which, fortunately, has not succeeded so far”.
Popov stresses that currently there is not even a political option represented at any level of government in Serbia that advocates a greater degree of autonomy for Vojvodina.
“To be clear, separatism would imply advocating for the separation of Vojvodina from the state framework of Serbia, and no relevant political option in Vojvodina, either in its program or in political action in earlier times, let alone now, has had such an idea. On the contrary, in the early 1990s, the centralist tendency prevailed, so Milošević reduced the autonomy of Vojvodina to the so-called facade autonomy”, Popov clarifies.
According to Popov, “Vojvodina did not fare any better with the Constitution adopted in 2006, which defined for this province a single original competence – which is to adopt its own symbols – the coat of arms and the flag.
“In the earlier period, such a situation caused a reaction from a number of relevant political entities from Vojvodina, who advocated the return of original rights and powers to the province, but none of these efforts implied the separation of Vojvodina from Serbia. Currently, there is not even a political option represented at any level of government in Serbia that advocates a greater degree of autonomy for Vojvodina”, Popov says.
He adds that “the issue of decentralisation of Serbia and, within this framework, of the autonomy of Vojvodina is a legitimate democratic issue, and not a heresy, as the current government is trying to portray it, by equating it with separatism”.
Asked whether the current narratives pushed by the Serbian officials will negatively affect relations between different ethnic groups living in Vojvodina, Popov claims that “it will certainly not contribute to the improvement of interethnic relations in Vojvodina, on the contrary”.
Bojan Pajtić: The story of separatism is Vučić’s shot in the dark
According to Bojan Pajtić, a former Prime Minister of the Provincial Government of Vojvodina, and a Professor at the Faculty of Law in Novi Sad, stories about the threat of Vojvodina’s secession are a “shot in the dark”.
“
Vučić spent his entire career picking quarrels with people, stirring up troubles, as well as spreading hate speech. He polluted everything he touched. In the places where he ‘defended’ Serbs, there are no more Serbs. He will be remembered as one of the greatest pests in our history, and as the author of the most disgusting sentence ever uttered by a Serb – that if one Serb dies, one hundred Muslims should be killed. He does not have the capacity to make people fight against each other anymore. The fight against the non-existent Vojvodina separatism is one more “razzle-dazzle” for his supports. It is, however, a shot in the dark. No one trusts Vučić anymore, no one wants to see him in power anymore”, Bojan Pajtić states for European Western Balkans.