Tens of thousands of supporters brought by busload from all over Serbia and even from Kosovo and Bosnia, schools and theaters closed throughout the country, officials strongly “invited” to make the trip… As at the greatest hours of Yugoslavia, the Serbian president organized, on Friday May 26, a gigantic rally with all the means of the State to respond to the unprecedented protest which has shaken this Balkan country since the two shootings which left eighteen dead in early May. .
“Only a strong and united Serbia can face the problems”, claimed Aleksandar Vucic in front of a crowd estimated by the power “to 200,000 people”, gathered in the pouring rain in front of the Parliament, in the heart of Belgrade, after being transported free of charge from all over the country. Mr. Vucic took advantage of this gathering, dubbed “Serbia of Hope”, and presented as “the greatest in the whole history of Serbia”, to reach out to opponents by promising them “the opening of a dialogue”, while castigating “the politicians who tried to abuse the tragedy”.
Former Minister of Information of the late dictator Slobodan Milosevic, elected Prime Minister then President without interruption since 2014, Mr. Vucic thus hopes to defuse the protest movement called “Serbia against violence” which accuses him of having a responsibility in less indirect in the massacre at a school in Belgrade on May 3, in which a 13-year-old teenager shot dead nine of his classmates and the guard of his school, as well as in the shooting that occurred the following day in a rural area in south of the Serbian capital, which left eight dead.
The movement organized by the opposition demands the resignation of the interior minister and the head of the intelligence services. He also criticizes the pro-government media for their reality TV programs glorifying crime and violence. But opponents blame the president more broadly for his mafia connections and “a form of moral and political crisis from which we can only emerge by restarting the political system, associated with work on our history and the place of violence in our society”says Dobrica Veselinovic, one of the leaders of the left-wing ecologist party “Don’t let Belgrade down”.
” It is the beginning of the end “
The last opposition rally, Friday, May 19, was surprisingly large, with tens of thousands of people in the streets of the capital. Many protesters have drawn comparisons to the historic protests that led to the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. A former nationalist, Mr Vucic came to power in 2014 promising to lead his country towards European Union membership , but he gradually took an increasingly authoritarian turn, while cultivating his ties with China and Russia, modeled on the Hungarian nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban. The Magyar Foreign Minister also made the trip to Belgrade on Friday to deliver a speech in support of Mr. Vucic.
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