Two Scenarios For A Summer of Tough Decisions

The continuation of protests at a reduced intensity could lead to the likely scheduling of early elections. The second scenario of a sudden radicalisation of protests and

This summer in Serbia will be a season of tough decisions; decisions that are much more difficult than those the needed to be made in the summer of 2022, when a new distribution of power was expected following Aleksandar Vučić’s re-election as President of Serbia. And that was a distribution of power that then included the opposition, bringing it to its feet after a decade of decline.

The summer of 2023 is seeing the opposition on the rise, thanks to the mass “Serbia against violence” protests, with the question being whether it will share power with Vučić, or wrest power from him.

The first scenario is more likely, but the second one shouldn’t be completely ruled out either. In the first scenario, protests will wane as a result of natural causes - heatwaves, summer holidays and the passage of time. The passage of time in the sense that the protests were triggered by feelings of agonising grief over the two consecutive massacres of children and young people and the grieve is subsiding after six weeks (the usual 40 days).

The opposition that is organising the protests will probably opt to campaign to maintain this manifestation of discontent despite falling turnouts.

This would mean the repeating of the events of 2019, with the directing of performances aimed at expressing civil disobedience and rejecting Vučić’s concessions. Back in 2019, that meant the “occupation of the Rectorate” over the doctorate of Minister Siniša Malog, camping on Andrićev Venac under the window of Vučić’s office, the attempt to create a civic platform in the form of the so-called Assembly of a Free Serbia...

European mediators like Vladimir Bilčik and Matjaž Nemec would turn up at some point, promising greater control of election processes, and the opposition would nonetheless participate in the early elections that Vučić is announcing for autumn, but which could also be held in January 2024.

The opposition would win more than it has now in those elections, certainly taking power in Belgrade and probably at least one other major city in Serbia, and possibly taking some important ministerial post.

This scenario perfectly suits Vučić, who last winter abandoned a full-on conflict with the West because he would have had to pay a personal price that was too high for him. He is endeavouring to become the Milo Đukanović of the Balkans following the departure of Milo Đukanović. However, as he doesn’t have the popularity that Đukanović enjoyed among Western allies, Vučić is striving to be a mixture of Đukanović and Viktor Orbán, though he is already an autocrat who enjoys the full security protection of the West while simultaneously maintaining strong business ties with Russia and the East.

This also resulted in him abandoning the SNS, as a party with Russian-Chinese leanings, and endeavouring to make the domestic scene more like that of the West.

He can only be prevented from doing this by the second scenario of the sudden radicalisation of protests and chaos, which also implies a revolt within Vučić’s closest circle that isn’t on the horison, particularly following the Hague Tribunal having finally delivered a verdict against Jovica Stanišić, the former chief of Milošević’s secret service.

Milivoje Mihajlović journalist