Monty Python’s frightening circus

Why did the government celebrate its anniversary by parading tanks and armed vehicles through the streets of Subotica? If the city was occupied by the military and the police purely for the purpose of exhibition, why didn’t the other ministries display their equipment? Why were the ministries of force the only ones on parade, why not the ministry of labor, for example? We could have the happy workers waving from one truck and smiling patients representing the ministry of health from the other. Even the ministries without portfolio could display something appropriate. The minister of innovation could show his newly announced task force for combating social networks, for instance. And those ministers who don’t have anything appropriate to show, like the minister for natality (what, do you think she has something?) could display their ministerial chairs, at least. Why not, when the president of the parliament had already hosted her own exhibition of chairs?

If the government only wanted something visually attractive to mark its birthday, like kids want decorations and balloons, it could have, just like the first government of the current president, held the session under a clear sky. Maybe not in a mining basin, to avoid plagiarism accusations from the president, but in some other attractive location. Anything would be better than bringing heavily armed policemen and soldiers to the celebration, like clowns to a kid’s birthday.

But what if the police and the army had neither an exhibitive nor a decorative character? After all, they’ve already grown accustomed to occupying a different city in Serbia every month. Once to celebrate 372 days of government, the second time to celebrate the Police day, the third to perform a joint exercise in Kraljevo, the fourth just for the sake of it…

What reason could the government have for bringing heavy artillery onto the streets so often? Maybe they want to completely ruin the already bad asphalt just waiting for tanks to remodel it? Or to show our weapons to the enemy and, thus, deter them from all those assassinations and coups announced on the front pages of tabloids with high circulation and low morals?

And maybe the prime minister, who in her own words “showed that they are not toothless SNS members” (because they open museums), now wants to show us those teeth? To scare us a little, because we’re not sufficiently terrified by the daily threats made by our government? We are threatened with a referendum, threatened with dying out as a nation because we don’t have enough babies, threatened with bloodshed if we sign and bloodshed if we do not sign. If nothing else, they threaten us with weather alarms, whether it is hot or cold, rain or drought. And, as if all of this was not enough, they now have a fully armed military and police parading like a circus from city to city.

Monty Python’s circus was funny. This one is ridiculous. The problem is that Hitler was also ridiculous, especially in his knee-high socks and shorts, and we all know how that turned out.

Translated by Marijana Simic

Peščanik.net, 10.07.2018.