By Andi Bushati
The heavy blow dealt to Aleksndar Vučić’s state party in Sunday’s elections in Serbia has reopened a debate that has long been raging here in our part of the world: is it possible to get rid of an autocratic regime through elections? The motley list of Serbian students, made up of professors, athletes, farmers and doctors, is thought to have won 135–140 seats in a parliament with 250 seats, thereby creating the illusion that scores can be settled with a clique of usurpers through the ballot box.
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The Serbian progressives’ 13-year rule had all the means at its disposal to prevent a change of power. They controlled the country’s economic life and had far more money available than their competitors, who followed the tactic of going door to door to meet voters. They had strong ties with criminal groups, which they had used to fight, wearing masks and wielding clubs, against protesters who had marched tirelessly for two years through the streets of Belgrade, Novi Sad and smaller cities. They dominated a vast media apparatus of television channels and newspapers, both public and private, which broadcast propaganda for the autocrat from morning until night. They had brought most polling companies under their thumb; until the final days, the majority of them had predicted a photo-finish race rather than the clear result we see before us today.
So the question arises: How did Vučić’s collapse become possible? Is a new, credible opposition and popular mobilization enough to triumph in elections that are neither free, fair nor equal, as they invariably are under an autocratic regime? Of course not! Serbia is the typical example showing that this kind of power cannot be defeated through normal channels; that the way to confront it is not to chase after elections like a bull chasing a red cape, but to weaken, delegitimize and humiliate it through methods that, for the most part, are considered illegal or violent by the ruling caste.
In fact, to understand the miracle of this October 25, it is not enough to look only at the result emerging from the ballot boxes, but at the entire two-year trajectory of an epic confrontation. Since November 2024, when the collapse of a train-station roof in Novi Stad caused 16 deaths, our neighboring country has known no peace. Students, later joined by citizens, blocked the country’s main roads, showed themselves ready to clash with the police, occupied universities and set fire to the headquarters of the ruling party. They resisted numerous beatings, rubber batons, tear gas, water cannons and stun grenades. They grappled with masked paramilitaries and responded to their violence with violence. They mocked Vučić’s labels, which closely resemble those used by Edi Rama today. The Serbian autocrat also accused his opponents of being Nazis, then of serving foreign interests, and later of wanting to halt the country’s progress, while ridiculing them as few in number and disorganized. The choice they placed before society was clear: either choose Serbia’s future, or choose the mafia.
This fierce duel—sometimes peaceful and sometimes violent, sometimes massive and sometimes less so—began to eat away at the Serbian autocrat’s power. Vučić became unconvincing after choosing to identify himself with the nation and present himself as the only path to its future progress. He became ridiculous when he portrayed those genuine students as “terrorists,” “fascists” and “traitors.” He lost credibility as a factor of stability when he failed to defeat them, either through police violence or with the batons of paramilitaries who took to the streets to beat young people. His cult of invincibility crumbled when demonstrators dared to burn down the headquarters of the PSP and when they occupied universities, joining forces with professors.
Thus, if one follows the trajectory of this Serbian revolution step by step, it is not simply the story of an autocrat being overthrown through elections, but the effort involved in a daily battle—often harsh and violent, often intelligent and peaceful—to erode, diminish, shrink and humiliate his power. The present October 25 result was achieved only after this two-year process, which was necessary both to finally tear apart Vučić’s propaganda postcard and to overcome fear by shattering the myth of the man backed by the powerful.
In this sense, the Serbian miracle can serve as a user manual for anyone here who initially embraced the flamingo revolution and later its inevitable radical turn. Those who want it to succeed should not be seduced by the deceptive sirens of those preaching that students must form a party, that the flamingos must choose representatives to engage in dialogue with the authorities, because in a democracy everything is decided only through elections. The example coming from Belgrade is that, yes, elections will be reached one day, but that first and foremost the path begun in Tirana must continue: the daily afternoon rattling of the regime, provoking it to reveal its most criminal and insane side before everyone’s eyes, and confronting it in order to weaken it as much as possible before reaching the ballot boxes. Our autocrat, who for years has paid the same spin doctors as his Slavic brother, has so far followed the same mistaken responses as Vučić. He has equated himself with the state, embraced conspiracy theories about a foreign hand, denigrated protesters and used the most violent means at his disposal to suppress demonstrators. But this has produced only one effect: the final destruction of his façade as a democrat and, on the other hand, the death of fear of his violence. That is why we are today, more or less, where Serbia was one or two years ago; and if we know how to follow the same path with greater determination, our regime too may collapse on its own, without a party competing against it in elections, but simply through a list of professors, doctors or craftsmen selected by student representatives, whose achievement was to humiliate Vučić’s clique so thoroughly that they turned the voting into almost a formality. /Lapsi
