Mass student movement and strikes force resignation of prime minister
Mira Glavardanov
The situation in Serbia has reached boiling point, after three months of student protests demanding justice for the 15 victims of a collapsed roof at the railway station in the city of Novi Sad. The Vucic regime is seriously shaken. The prime minister has resigned, no doubt pushed by president Vucic, after a few previous scapegoat resignations or mock arrests of those ‘responsible’ for the tragedy. But Vucic himself, the autocrat who has ruled for over a decade, is still standing.
The collapsed roof last November was the last straw after years of profiteering by the mafia-like government. Student protests exploded soon after, blockading universities and colleges throughout the country. Teachers came out in support, in most cases not backed by trade unions. Farmers, who have their own grievances about policies that ruin domestic food production, or the landgrabbing attempts by the mining company Rio Tinto, supported students from the start. They have organised protests in their towns and villages, and visited students on the campuses, bringing farm produce and cooking them dinners.
Strikes
Students have been calling on workers to join them in strikes, and a few independent unions have answered. There have been numerous short stoppages which culminated on 24 January in a so-called general strike (more like a ‘national strike’ as most unions didn’t participate officially). Huge masses of workers and students came out on to the streets. Teachers whose unions didn’t support the strike formed ‘forums’ where they decided to walk out. Some postal workers and miners also walked out. There have been discussions among some union leaders and others on how to organise a proper general strike.
In Serbia at the present time, every ‘culmination’ of events is soon followed by another, bigger one. One week after the strike hundreds of students from Belgrade marched 80 kilometres to Novi Sad, with the aim to occupy the three bridges on the river Danube, marking three months since the collapse of the railway station roof. They walked for two days and were received in towns and villages on the way with an abundance of food and drink, and such jubilation that it was compared to the greetings liberating armies received at the end of both world wars. The welcome in Novi Sad was spectacular with huge masses of people gathered. Farmers accompanied the students on tractors, along with long lines of bikers and cyclists.
The mood in the country has been transformed. Following the collapse of Yugoslavia and three decades that saw wars, sanctions, NATO bombing and ultra-nationalist governments topped by the Vucic regime, people of Serbia had been demoralised, impoverished, scared and cynical about any possibility of a change. In just three months the student movement has fundamentally changed that. This is an incredible achievement, thanks to their determination and ingenuity, and importantly because people recognise the student self-organisation and inability of the distrusted official opposition to influence them in any way.
Vucic has unsuccessfully tried every trick to corrupt the movement but so far, he has no answer. He has used violence. His thugs have driven cars into protesters, beaten them up, but every new injured student pours more petrol onto the fire. He tried to buy them off with a promise of slashing university fees by 50% (one of the student demands is an increase in state university funding by 20%), but it was seen as a win and only strengthened the determination.
He has managed to buy off some corrupt teacher union leaders who agreed to a moratorium on strikes in exchange for a measly pay rise. There are reports of a mass exodus of members from such unions and joining independent unions. The agreement was signed after the prime minister’s resignation, which effectively meant the collapse of the government, so who did the unions sign the agreement with? But in Serbia everybody knows who pulls all the strings. In a similar move to teachers, miners who for years have been angry at the corruption of their union leaders have decided to form a new union.
Capitalists silent
The silence from the European Union, always eager to back ‘democracy’ protests when it’s in the strategic profit interests of its dominant constituent parts, has been eye-opening. The EU in fact condemned “the violent occupation of institutions”, obviously directed at the student blockades of universities, even though there hasn’t been any violence. The truth is that the EU wants Vucic in place because he has promised them Serbian lithium reserves and a change of government would risk that. EU capitalism is keen to take the lead in the race with China on electric car manufacturing and lithium is crucial in it. The battle against the mine is far from over. Rio Tinto is at this moment lobbying the EU to officially put its weight behind the project. With such mobilisation of people in Serbia that already exists against the mine and the government, Rio Tinto, the EU and Vucic, know very well that the mine would not be able to proceed without the use of heavy violence. But for the capitalists, profits override human rights and it is not inconceivable that they might resort to that.
The US is also silent. One of the reasons is that Vucic has given Trump’s son-in-law a prime location in Belgrade – ironically, a former Yugoslav army headquarters, damaged by the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 – to build a ‘Trump hotel’. All this illustrates that corruption is at the heart of the profit-driven system of capitalism; Vucic, and Trump, are just blatant manifestations of it. Russia has also urged ‘stability’ in Serbia as it also has investments. Vucic has managed to unite all opposing capitalist powers in support of him, as a tool to try to strengthen his grip on power.
The student movement, on the other hand, has started to reunite ordinary people in the region. Students from Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro often organise gatherings in solidarity. In Croatia they have been condemned by the authorities, afraid that they can turn to the corrupt domestic politics. The EU powers must be afraid of the same. Solidarity protests have been organised in many European and other cities by the Serbian diaspora.
Sooner or later the Vucic regime could fall, but what next? The opposition, which had been in power before Vucic, is not seen as an alternative by the masses. The left is very small and fragmented, and some sections of it don’t even support the student movement because ‘it lacks a class character’, so abandoning the very task of offering a way forward. Others on the left do recognise the fundamentally progressive character of the protests, especially the student assemblies as self-governing bodies that, together with the teachers’ forums, offer a glimpse of how a democratic socialist society could function. Some liberal groups are proposing a transitional ‘government of experts’, but this rests on the illusion that a state can be neutral between the interests of big capital and the working class and all ordinary people. This reveals a further confusion, that it’s possible to talk about a ‘democratic, free society’ without talking about bringing an end to capitalism and struggling for socialism.
Masses of students and workers protested too during the fall of the Milosevic regime in 2000. Then, the western powers wanted Milosevic gone because he didn’t open the country to the foreign capital (privatisations benefited domestic tycoons). But with Milosevic gone, equally corrupt forces usurped power. The tasks of developing a political programme and organisations that stand firmly for the interests of workers, farmers and all ordinary people, independent of the capitalist elites, are more than urgent.
