Unprecedented protests have been raging in Serbia for four months. The upheaval was brought on by the collapse of a roof at Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, on November 1, which resulted in the deaths of 15 people and two critically injured people.
Despite various strategies by the government to try to suppress the demonstrations, they have only gained momentum. Large demonstrations and strikes have taken place across the country while universities have been occupied.
Foreign observers and the international media have either ignored this mass mobilisation or reduced it to “anti-corruption” protests. The United States and the European Union, which typically flaunt their democracy promotion credentials, have not supported the protests, while President Aleksandar Vui and his ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) have backed them.
Serbia has seen far more than just citizens expressing their frustration with their governments or demanding resignations. A new model of society and government has been emerging in the last three months.
Given that it comes amid Europe’s history of democracy devastation and a political establishment crisis, it is important to pay attention to this historical development.
Blockades and occupations
Local residents and students staged 15-minute roadblockades in Novi Sad to honor the 15 lives lost in silence shortly after the disaster struck. More than 200 cities, towns, and villages held similar vigils throughout the nation in a highly decentralized manner.
When a group of students from Belgrade University’s Faculty of Dramatic Arts physically assaulted by a group of people, they attempted to hold a small 15-minute vigil on November 22.
The students decided to occupy their facilities three days later in response to this and other similar attacks, and without receiving any response from the authorities. This gave rise to similar actions from other students.
Six significant public universities were occupied in the following weeks, which practically paralyzed higher education across the nation because all academic activity there has been suspended.
The students moved one step further on February 13 by occupying Belgrade’s Student Cultural Center, which was formerly a vibrant cultural and student life hub before the Ministry of Education’s administration shut down and was primarily used for business purposes.
The students took to the streets to protest the occupation of the universities. They occupied a major traffic intersection in Belgrade for 24 hours on January 28. Similar occupations took place in Novi Sad on February 1 and Kragujevac on February 15.
Groups of students walked 100km (60 miles) to support their colleagues in Novi Sad and Kragujevac. Along the way, they were greeted by masses of people who provided meals, refreshments, medical aid and accommodation.
Hunderts of taxi drivers showed up to drive the students back to Belgrade at the conclusion of the student protest in Novi Sad. Around 700 protesters from outside of Kragujevac were able to live in their homes. Citizens ‘ solidarity with the students has been spectacular.
Throughout these occupations and marches, the students ‘ demands have remained the same: the release of all documents pertaining to the train station’s reconstruction, the prosecution of those attacking protesters, the dismissal of charges against protesters, and an increase in the higher education budget.
They are not demanding the government’s resignation, snap elections, or that the opposition take over.
Disobedient universities
The occupations have challenged not only the status quo within Serbian universities, but also outside.
Through student assemblies or plenums, where each student has the right to speak and receives a vote on all decisions, students have developed effective self-government. Ad hoc working groups are established to address a range of issues, including those involving security, logistics, PR, and legal issues.
The university occupations alternate the representatives who speak to the public, but without a discernable leadership. They vocally distance themselves from all political parties, party politics, established civil society organizations, and even informal groups, and are adamant about their autonomy.
By embracing ossified institutionalized politics and representative democracy, they are creating a new political space and new tools for the political to be implemented.
Students have essentially created a “disobedient institution” that is both internal and external, and that proclaims its own political authority, agrees to its own needs, establishes its own rules, and pursues its own agendas.
Students in Serbia have full control over the institutions they have occupied while enjoying the overwhelming support of the public: about 80% of Serbian citizens support their demands, in contrast to student protesters who recently demonstrated in support of Gaza in the West. Moreover, the universities are publicly funded and not yet transformed into money-making factories, as is the case in the US, which gives the students ‘ demands that much more weight.
Leading by example
While opposition parties and civil society groups close to them have proposed to resolve the crisis by forming an “interim government” made up of technocrats or party representatives, students are calling for “systemic change” and fundamental, bottom-up democratisation.
These concepts are now popular. During the mass rally in Novi Sad, which I attended, students organised the first citizens ‘ plenum. If they wanted to keep the blockade going for another three hours, people were asked to raise their hands and cast ballots. It was enthralling to raise my hand among the thousands of others.
The students have repeatedly emphasized the necessity for other organizations to organize and make their own demands within their own institutions. Some people have responded to their request.
Given that the SNS regime essentially controls all public institutions, including the unions, and was able to persuade them not to join, Serbia got the closest it could to a general strike on January 24.
The strike was continued by employees from a number of professional associations, including those in various institutions. Individual schools and even individual teachers suspended classes while education unions withdrew from the general strike.
Left without the protection of their professional associations, the teachers subsequently formed a new, informal institution, “Association of schools on strike”, which apart from backing the students ‘ demands, put forward their own. They are still striking despite being subject to a lot of pressure, including the threat of pay reductions.
Other industries have also taken up the protests in various ways. The lawyers’ work was suspended for a month by the Serbian Bar Association. The unions of Belgrade’s public transportation companies and public pharmacies protested against the privatization of their respective industries.
Workers in the cultural sector created an informal “Culture in blockade” initiative. After holding several protests and plenums of their own, on February 18, they occupied the Belgrade Cultural Center, one of the city’s most important cultural institutions. Meanwhile, many theatres have also gone on strike.
Democracy from below
Liberal politics have completely stale politics in the present. Students in Serbia benefit from widespread support because they have no desire to assume power from their universities and have no interest in anything else than what the public already has, which is most evident in the country’s situation, including the opposition, while there is little public confidence in the political establishment, including the opposition.
There is a pressing need to develop alternative societal and political imaginaries as liberal democracy struggles to survive in the face of illiberalism, authoritarianism, and techno-fascism while facilitating their rise. Serbian students have shown the way.
Unlike socialist “self-management”, which was pursued as state policy by the communist regime of the Yugoslav Federation and implemented from the top down, the self-governance of students, and increasingly other social actors, comes from the ground up. The students have seized an institution, recreated and democratised it, thereby redefining the very meaning of democracy.
In this way, students have opened up a horizon towards another kind of democracy, another kind of future beyond “capitalist realism” and the dying liberal order.
The current political situation in Serbia is one of social and state conflict, according to professor Branislav Jakovljevi. Serbian citizens have the opportunity to reclaim anddemocratize state institutions. To participate in this highly experimental renegotiation of how their society should be run, they will need great courage and creative conquest.
The hope is that, in this endeavour, they will be guided by the ethics the students have consistently displayed: those of justice, freedom and solidarity.
Source: Aljazeera
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