On Saturday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić announced at a rally of his supporters in Niš that the demands of the student movement were “finished”, while at the same time, from their protest in that city, the students announced that they would not remain silent or give up and reiterated their demand to call for extraordinary parliamentary elections.
Vučić told the students that he was no longer interested in their demands, and that extraordinary elections would be held when the “competent institutions” decide.
The student movement, born in the wake of the wave of protests due to the death of 16 people in the fall of the canopy at the Novi Sad railway station on November 1 last year, highlighted at the end of that month demands in which they demand political and criminal responsibility of the authorities and contractors for the tragedy in Novi Sad, the causes of which it sees in the corrupt practices of the authorities, reminds Hina news agency.
Students, along with the fight against corruption, demand the independent work of institutions without political influence and pressure, an orderly society and media freedom, and at the beginning of May they added the calling of extraordinary elections to their demands.
Vučić told them last night not to seek elections, judging that – when they are called – the ruling coalition would win even more convincingly than in the previous ones.
“The demands are over, Niš is a new free territory, so will the whole of Serbia,” Vučić said at the meeting, which he called a “national assembly” to which thousands of people were brought by buses to participate in the promotion of the Movement for the People and the State.
The foundation of the movement was initiated by Vučić with the intention of uniting political forces and social groups, and new rallies were announced throughout Serbia in order to depreciate student protests and belittle their actions, among which was the recent cycling “Tour to Strasbourg” and the student relay ultramarathon from Novi Sad to Brussels.
He assessed that the students were “seduced by social networks and their professors”, again calling the protests “a colored revolution”.
He told professors and the academic community, which supports students in the blockades and their demands, that “they will not receive a single dinar” until they start teaching.
Students, on the other hand, from a rally held in another square, a kilometer away from Vučić’s supporters, said that “truth and lies are being broken” in two squares in Niš.
“We will not remain silent, we demand responsibility, justice and truth. We want elections to free institutions and for them to fulfill our demands,” said the Niš students.
