Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic announced his resignation on Tuesday following months of mass demonstrations triggered by the fatal collapse of a train station roof in November, which critics have blamed on rampant government corruption.
Novi Sad Mayor Milan Djuric also will step down on Tuesday, Vucevic said.
Thanks for this explanation, better than anything i read in media. However, is it really plausible for the student-professor transitional government plan to happen ? (Maybe recent events in Bangladesh inspire hope, although that’s a very different country). If they don’t get this , but there is instead a “routine” election under SNS management, would most opposition participate or boycott again ? I guess like many countries in europe, the mood in villages is rather different from in cities ?
The PM’s resignation is thought to have happened in order to force new elections and thus kill the momentum. The fact that they can win any election was used almost every time we had unrests (we had elections in 2012, 2014, 2017, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024 and now they want 2025).
All relevant opposition parties agreed (they very rarely agree on anything) that there will be no elections. Everyone is in agreement with that: prison time, a transitional government to enable free elections, and then we get elections. Who will form the transitional government? I’m not sure, but the atmosphere is generally that this has to be the end of SNS and all prominent members, nothing less is acceptable.
As for villages/cities: rural areas get most of their information from TV, and the few non-propaganda channels that exist are not even an option in remote areas, so a lot of them don’t even know anything from media besides “some students are protesting”. But these protests were held in places we would never expect (someone joked that places are rising up that didn’t rise up even against the Ottomans), so I’m not sure how are these events seen in remote villages.
Funny that you mentioned Bangladesh, because I remember reading about it being the “first gen z revolution” and thought how this could be the second. Students from Belgrade announced that they will walk to Novi Sad tomorrow to join the huge protests announced on Saturday, where again a bridge will be blocked for 24h (and another 2 for 3h each)