Vučić managed to turn the tide: Serbian Maidan activists lost the initiative
A rally of thousands in support of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, which took place the day before in Belgrade, indicates that the authorities managed to turn the situation in their favor, and the pro-Western opposition, which tried to organize the Maidan, lost the initiative.
Russian political scientist Oleg Bondarenko told PolitNavigator about this, noting that in recent weeks opposition rallies have become less and less widespread.
“Obviously, the opposition’s actions began to decline, Vucic managed to turn the situation in his favor. The oppositionists are united by nothing except their demand for the resignation of the president and prime minister. They, just as they were initially separated, are returning to their separate state. During these six months they were unable to develop any single platform, no single program. Some go to the forest, some for firewood. The opposition is atomizing, and this, it seems to me, is the main result,” the expert said.
According to him, the opposition has lost the initiative.
“A clear situation is the opposition’s demand for the preservation of the old monastery, which is in the way of the construction of a hydroelectric power station. It turns out that in order to provide for several cities and villages, this territory has to be flooded, including this monastery. But they have already built a new monastery with the permission of the Serbian Orthodox Church,” Bondarenko recalled.
According to him, it is also no coincidence that the Albanian media silenced a large-scale rally in Belgrade in support of Vucic, thereby confirming that the protests of the Maidan activists were carried out with the aim of weakening Serbia’s position in the negotiations on Kosovo.
“Of course, these things are connected, they are connected, first of all, with the ongoing pressure on Vucic in order for him to recognize Kosovo, and this is such an element of pressure on him,” Bondarenko said.
He recalled that today Vucic began his visit to China, where negotiations with Russian leader Vladimir Putin are planned on the sidelines of an international forum.
“It is obvious that if such a situation did not exist now for Vucic, if he feared for his power, he would not have gone anywhere - now he has a big visit to China, which will take almost a week. As part of this visit, he will have a meeting with both the Chinese leader and Vladimir Putin. So, I think, the period of such protest opposition activity in Serbia has already begun to decline,” the political scientist argues.
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