The elections came and went. The opposition cried that Vučić would steal the election. And on Sunday, Vučić indeed stole the election. And that’s it. There is nothing more to say about that. Except, that’s not enough to make a whole article, so I’ll talk a little more about the recent elections. Naturally, Vučić calls his theft a victory. The opposition rightly calls his victory a theft. In this terminological split, in the country that Serbia is today, the stronger one wins, and that is still Vučić.
What I mean to say is that on Sunday, we didn’t witness the counting of votes, but a game of arm wrestling. For a good part of the campaign, the opposition focused on Vučić’s show of force. This means that the opposition’s protagonists have well understood and described the nature of the electoral game. But if you reduce the entire campaign to the fact that the theft has already begun, and on the day of the election all you do is actually document the theft, that is simply not enough to oust Vučić. During the campaign, the opposition demonstrated that it still does not have the strength to deal with Vučić. This is not a condemnation of the opposition, it is a fact.
Because there are no good reasons for condemnation. Except, perhaps, that the campaign could have been different, and the opposition’s promises could have been more modest. It’s not just the fact that the opposition lost even in Belgrade. On the contrary, it’s about how the opposition plans to lift its voters out of the post-election depression. With a different campaign, these results could have been presented as a small victory, as another step towards removing Vučić and his collaborators (because they are not a party) from power. But the milk has been spilled, and now we need to find a new jug.
Okay, this wasn’t the best metaphor. The jug – the coalition against violence – wasn’t bad at all, and it would be good to preserve it and not smash it in anger. In the next campaign, at least that part of the opposition should refrain from things they did the most in this one – we’ve discovered fraud, we ask citizens to report, check, submit, complain… To whom? Which citizens? When? One throughline of your campaign says that life in Serbia is desperate, that people work all day long just to survive, that we have no institutions, everything has been usurped by the party in power, from the police to the prosecution to the courts. And then the other throughline says – citizens, get involved, uncover their frauds. These two throughlines are too obviously in conflict with each other.
The second throughline had to be seen through to the end by the party activists themselves – we caught them doing this, and we did this and that, and the result is as follows. This didn’t happen, so Sunday was actually the culmination of the opposition campaign, without resolution, just like the whole campaign.
It is clear that with a regime that has put everything under its control, including illegally issuing new ID cards in droves, one must avoid a situation where things depend on counting, because to every objection you make, the regime will reply that everything was done in accordance with the law, and even if it wasn’t the court will have the final say on that, and it will, in the least malicious scenario, declare itself incompetent. The force of the state is used to demonstrate force in elections. If you invoke the law and institutions, you will be defeated. That is why the opposition had to enter the campaign without big promises. Public opinion polls, common sense, all this is of little use in the face of the usurped bare power of the state.
Am I now calling for violence for the sake of fighting violence? Of course not. Vučić himself and his collaborators call for violence. This should be kept in mind before every election. And messages for the voters should be measured accordingly. If all that is taken into account, the opposition did not even do that badly, and Vučić, in fact, did horribly.
At least the opposition against violence did well, while the so-called right-wing opposition fell apart. However, this is not a reason for cheer. Without that radical right wing, this less radical right wing that we call the left has no chance in the fight against Vučić. Yes, let’s remember DOS and draw conclusions (again). The opposition’s strongest card in the election campaign was unification in a coalition against violence. That alone brought the votes, which only melted away during the campaign.
It can be assumed that unification on the so-called real right wing would have had a similar effect. It didn’t happen. Two out of three strong right-wing formations sank below the census. We can only ask them to come to an agreement next time. Not only among themselves, but also with the coalition against violence. No political actor in the three right-wing columns and the one “left” one expressed a different position on any of the supposedly most important issues for Serbia. They could have entered the elections together easily. And we, who voted against our will, would have done the same in that situation. Because, in order to move forward, Serbia must get rid of Vučić.
On that note, one final remark. For the umpteenth time, Kosovo turned out to be a red herring before the elections. It was a topic imposed by the regime, and accepted even by the opposition and free media. Kosovo is simply not relevant anymore, and that was clear on Sunday. The right wing, which never takes Kosovo out of their mouths, mostly disappeared from the political scene. A clown fared better than the defenders of Kosovo. On the other hand, a person who managed to lose Kosovo twice in his political career won the election by a landslide. Without anyone going out in the street and defending Kosovo from Vučić.
Kosovo was a point of contention between the opposition actors and, as such, played its part in Vučić’s campaign very well. Next time, opposition members, set Kosovo aside and negotiate smarter if you think you have any chance against Vučić, because he has already settled Kosovo for you.
Translated by Marijana Simić
Peščanik.net, 20.12.2023.
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