The late Vojin Dimitrijević, a renowned Serbian law professor and a human rights activist, warned that “when the radicals come, there will be no more elections”.
The radicals in question being the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS), the former political organization of Aleksandar Vučić, SRS’s former secretary-general, a parliament member, and a government minister during the period of Yugoslav Wars back in the 1990s. Vučić and many of his associates split from SRS and formed their own political organization called the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in 2008. More liberal Serbs have a saying: “Once a radical, always a radical“.
Novi Sad, the capital of the northern province of Vojvodina, is reportedly experiencing a city-wide water shortage today, while the protests in commemoration of the Russo-Chinese train station canopy collapse that killed 16 bystanders one year ago are being held there today.
I still remember the elation from my compatriots telling me back in 2012-2013: “I didn’t vote for Vučić, but I’m glad they are back, they’ll sort out corruption“. When I would start countering it with complaints about Progressive’s supporters harassing and threatening people with “purges of pro-EU traitors”, all I would get were blank stares and “Never mind that, they’ll sort out corruption”.
Fast forward to 2024-2025, Mr. Dimitrijević was right about the elections – no more of those, at least not fair and democratic ones, and apparently no more running water.
It didn’t take long for Serbia to reap the whirlwind of such poor voting choices.
The 2014 floods quickly exposed the negligence, incompetence, and callousness of the SNS. Accidents and economic hardships followed with no end in sight. But the electorate held firm to its choice of the type of policymakers it desired.
For such an administration filled with dignitaries with a history of a policy that led to the horrific violence and misery of the Yugoslav Wars, it was only natural to begin to engage in repression and corruption, basically from the day they stepped back into the office.
The conclusion of the Inquiry Commission is that the “canopy collapse is a result of the criminal group’s actions, suspicions point to the President of the Republic”.
A separate, official state investigation is also ongoing, but as of October 2025, no one has been convicted in relation to the tragedy.
Retired prosecutor Jasmina Paunović pointed out during today’s speech in Novi Sad during the commemorative gathering that all of us, as citizens, do not have the right to calmly watch the ruin of our country. She told the young people, “Stay in this country, because the sun doesn’t warm like this anywhere anymore“.
Appeals to stay in Serbia, instead of emigrating, often take inspiration from the poem written by Aleksa Šantić titled Ostajte ovdje (Stay here):
Stay here!… The sun that shines in a foreign place,
Will never warm you like the sun in your own;
The bread has a bitter taste there
Where one has no one, not even a brother.
She has a point. If you leave Serbia, there are fewer slaves for idiotic underpaid jobs in a 41+ hours work week, no potential recruits for the army to reclaim the Serbian world, no pensions for Jasminas of this world, which would all be very terrible. Plus, you can’t get killed by pollution and Chinese canopies. And we wouldn’t want that, now would we?
If you stay, you are amongst your people that share one vision of the world, as witnessed at the September 20th military parade. Both the government supporters and the student protesters cheered for the display of Serbian military might.
The parade preparations did negate the undying conspiracy theory that the Serbian military equipment was destroyed at the behest of the Western powers, by melting down tanks, IFVs, and howitzers at the Smederevo ironworks steel plant, and after the American owners were through with melting down scrap steel, they decided to leave with all the imaginary billions of euros they made by ruining us. A lie that was repeated for decades by the supporters of our current dominant national ideology. But a lie we repeat still, because not repeating it would be unpatriotic. We sometimes expand the lie a bit by adding how machines from Serbian enterprises were also sent to the ironworks to be melted down.
Ruined the asphalt, but it will get fixed.
The holiday is named the Day of Serb Unity, Freedom, and the National Flag, after all, both Serbia and Republika Srpska celebrate it. Serbs from Republika Srpska love Serbia so much that busloads of them visit all over Serbia whenever there is an election here, just to make sure the results don’t skew too far towards icky ideas of liberalism and joining the EU.
During non-voting days, Serbs from Republika Srpska are referred to as citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina if they happen to commit a crime.
Dijana Hrka, a mother of the Novi Sad tragedy victim, announced that she’s going on a hunger strike. A parliament member, Uglješa Mrdić, from the ruling Progressives, is also going on a hunger strike.
The SNS buses and summon people from all over the country to display massive support – the students bus and summon people from all over the country to display massive support.
The idea amongst the opponents of Vučić is that he and his associates will be rejected by the state administration, their voters, and the security forces because of the violations of the dominant authoritarian moral compass, for being “a traitor, a bad Serb”, as opposed to those who tried to position themselves as “true patriots, better Serbs”.
That is a delusion. Being a member or a supporter of the ruling parties is very much socially acceptable and comfortable, because the ideology that created and nurtured such a government was never delegitimized.
Serbian expression “Kurta i Murta” is our variation of the cynical notion of Pepsicrats and Republicoke, a duopoly of two basically the same political blocks that create an illusion of choice, and that elections do not matter. But the opposing sides are now seen by a large portion of the public as Kurta and another Kurta – completely the same, just different personnel choices.
The two opposing sides during the protests physically look the same, so much so that the police sometimes “crowd-controls” the government supporters by mistake.
The European Union isn’t hated in Serbia because the evil wizards from the European Commission are keeping Vučić in power so they could grab our lithium, causing the Serbian farmers to get disillusioned by the notions of democracy and rule of law. Local fanatically authoritarian, paternalist, and parochial electorate brought him back to power, knowing full well what he is.
Not all foreign commentators are oblivious to the fact that both the protesters and the government hold similar, if not the same, values.
This isn’t personal, but everyone makes it out to be – just oust Vučić, but don’t change the mentality and ideas that created Vučić, and somehow, automagically all will be hunky-dory.
Serbianism 