Believe It or Not: The Serbian Government Threatens the Opposition with a Hunger Strike

A foreigner who found themselves in Serbia for the first time and heard the translation of one of the news reports on Thursday, April 11, 2019, would likely think they were in a country where anarchy has taken hold and state institutions do not function.

What else could an uninformed person think upon hearing the announcement that Serbia's Minister of Defense Aleksandar Vulin, Deputy Mayor of Belgrade Goran Vesić, together with members of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party in the National Assembly and councilors of that party in the Belgrade Assembly, will go on a hunger strike to civilly oppose "the hooliganism and violence that the leaders of the Alliance for Serbia are carrying out in Belgrade," except that for some reason in that country neither the police (not even the municipal police), nor the prosecutors, courts, or inspectors are working—no one whose job it is to prevent and sanction possible law violations—so the government representatives have resorted to this desperate step.

How will potential investors understand the message from the second most important person in the largest city in the Balkans, who says he sees no other way to civilly resist "the hooliganism of part of the opposition, who disrupt works in central Belgrade, destroy citizens' property, and drive away investors," except by a hunger strike? Probably not as an invitation to invest capital in Serbia's capital.

The question is also how citizens will perceive the hunger strike by government representatives. This method is usually used by those who have exhausted all ways to convince the government to do something in their favor. Whom is the government trying to convince and of what? The opposition to give up protests or institutions to view protests through the eyes of Vesić and Vulin?

Bojan Klačar, Executive Director of the Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID), says it is "very atypical" for a stable government to use methods such as a hunger strike in the fight against the opposition.

He believes this is a continuation of the government's negative campaign against the opposition and an attempt to reach undecided or potential opposition voters to deter them from attending the large opposition rally on April 13 in Belgrade.

"It is clear that the decision within the Serbian Progressive Party is that the way to fight protests and the opposition is through harsh criticism in an effort to associate them with violence," Klačar told Beta agency, noting that this is something the government can heavily utilize through media close to it.

He says the government thus reaches its voters but also, he emphasizes, tries to influence some people who are considering whether to attend the opposition rally, because if they read "all those numerous headlines talking about possible incidents and possible violent outbursts," they might not want to go.

To some extent, Klačar assessed, the government representatives also want to "somehow present themselves as people ready to sacrifice their health fighting for the state and the ideas of the entire community, unlike those they portray as violent."

Deputy Mayor of Belgrade Goran Vesić told Tanjug that through the hunger strike they want to draw the attention of the domestic and international public to "the terror that Obradović's (Boško, one of the leaders of the opposition Alliance for Serbia) fascists are carrying out in Serbia."

For Dr. Duško Radosavljević, professor at the Faculty of Law "Dr Lazar Vorkapić" in Novi Sad, this is a performance only for the domestic public.

"There is a constant attempt here to impose a pattern where any criticism is unacceptable. We constantly play the role of Calimero, who is wronged, someone is always preventing us from starting to live well tomorrow. This is now turning from a tragedy into a farce because we have a situation where holders of the most important positions, who control the apparatus of force, are whining about being threatened by those who, according to their estimates, have less than 10 percent support among the people. I dare not even imagine what would happen if the opposition had 40-45 percent support. We would have ghettos in cities, it would be known where some are allowed to go and where others are not," Radosavljević told Al Jazeera.

Klačar explains that usually the government in a country tries to fulfill promises through state activities and thus manages political processes through the power it holds, while the opposition's job is to have a strong campaign against the government and for its voters all the time, whereas in Serbia the government is in a constant campaign.

Professor Radosavljević recalls that the Progressives previously resorted to hunger strikes, though then as the opposition. "Let's just remember the hunger strike of Tomislav Nikolić and the styrofoam."

Indeed, in April 2011, the founder and first president of the then opposition Serbian Progressive Party, Tomislav Nikolić, at one of the party rallies announced that he had started a hunger strike and would not stop it unless the government called early parliamentary elections by the end of that year. He also said he understood workers who were on hunger strike due to the difficult economic situation and cut off their fingers, even though just a year earlier he had bought an apartment worth almost 400,000 euros. However, he ended the strike after eight days, on Orthodox Easter, after eating an Easter egg. The elections were not called by the end of that year but the following year at the regular time.

This time, the announced hunger strike falls during the Easter fast, only this time there are 16 days until Orthodox Easter, so the challenge for the strikers is twice as big. And this time they are entering the strike from a position of power.

"Nonviolent struggle for the rights of an oppressed government is an interesting and commendable concept. In that sense, all those who join this struggle should be supported and we should hope that this noble idea will not stop within our borders. There are still governments in the world in difficult positions that will resist unnatural attacks from their oppositions through their own nonviolence," sarcastically said marketing expert Voja Žanetić.

"If the 20th century was remembered for Gandhi's nonviolence, the 21st century will be remembered for this advancement of that idea. Maybe not the Nobel Prize, but at least the Darwin Award could be given," Žanetić told Al Jazeera.

Žanetić is not the only one who mockingly comments on the news about the hunger strike by government representatives. One of the leaders of the opposition Alliance for Serbia, Boško Obradović, wrote on Twitter: "If I understand correctly, government representatives will be on a hunger strike until the demands for the dismissal of the opposition are met. Vulin, Vesić, and their team will not be at their workplaces, for which they receive state and city salaries, until they secure the resignations of opposition leaders."

Some were reminded of a sketch from the surrealist Top Lista Nadrealista about a government strike, others on social media are calling on the satirical portal Njuz.net to admit defeat after this news, and some share messages encouraging the Minister of Defense to hold on until the end.

However, it would not be the first time that the Progressives, as the government in Serbia, resort to means more typical of the opposition. They have patented a form of parliamentary action where ruling coalition MPs submit hundreds of amendments to government-proposed laws. What was once characteristic of the opposition, which used this as an opportunity to gain more space to express their views and objections, is now done by the government, practically preventing the opposition from speaking.

It used to be a tradition that only the opposition complained about unequal media treatment, which the government usually denied. Today, in a country that does not rank well on the media freedom list, where opposition members as guests in national TV studios are as rare as rain in the desert, while regime officials dominate the news programs of these media, it is no longer unusual to hear government representatives complain about the public broadcaster or a few critically minded media.

Still, the announced hunger strike is a step further compared to what has been seen before.

"This is like news from the 'Believe It or Not' section of Politika's Zabavnik. That a party controlling almost three-quarters of the parliament and nearly 100 percent of the political space fears these 'pricks' in the form of protests is, to put it mildly, unusual. That representatives of a regime that has power at all levels, from local communities to the republican government, say they are threatened, seems like an insult to common sense," says Professor Radosavljević.

During his hunger strike, Tomislav Nikolić was visited by then Serbian President Boris Tadić, whose Democratic Party was in power at the time, as well as Patriarch Irinej, who asked him to stop the strike. He did not listen to the first but ended the thirst strike at the patriarch's request.

If the saying that history repeats itself is true, it should not be surprising if the Serbian president and the patriarch visit the strikers. The only question is whether the Minister of Defense will dare to refuse a similar request from his supreme commander.