“The opposition does not have the capacity to make Serbia against Violence protest more massive, nor to maintain the current number of protesters, but that does not mean that the protests will disappear,” sociologist Jovo Bakić says.
Bearing in mind that huge protests on Belgrade streets were announced throughout the summer, such as those that took place during the month of May, when the number of protesters reached tens of thousands, the protest that was announced on Saturday and is due to take place towards the end of August, when that the majority of Belgraders have returned from their vacation, should, by those standards, be the test of truth for such claims.
Bakić, however, believes that the massiveness of the protests does not depend on the opposition leaders at all.
“Even if the protests died down, they would soon re-emerge, because the situation in society is unbearable,” he says.
However, as he adds, the opposition is still led by people who were important until 2012 and are untrustworthy. “Some of them have demonstrable ties the regime of Aleksandar Vučić who tried his best to break the opposition, blackmailing or buying opposition leaders. The opposition is divided over strategic matters, such as foreign policy orientation, as well as the Kosovo issue,” points out Jovo Bakić.
As for the support that Vučić gets from the West, Bakić says that he is still their “player”, because that’s what it currently suits them. “They can always blackmail him while he facilitates their companies amassing huge profits”, Bakić concludes.
(Danas, 23.08.2023)
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