Why Serbia’s Disgruntled Citizens Aren’t Backing the Opposition

The international journalistic organisation Reporters without Borders ranked Serbia in 90th place in 2019 in terms of freedom of the media, 14 places lower than in 2018. According to the EU statistics agency Eurostat, about 51,000 mostly young and educated people leave Serbia every year.

Taking into account that the average salary, of 468 euros in October 2019, and the average pension, of 224 euros, are among the lowest in Europe, it is easy to conclude that there are many reasons for dissatisfaction with the current regime.

But while there are plenty of reasons to want change, there is no foreseeable joint path for the opposition parties and citizens who are against Vucic and his SNS.

The opposition remains fragmented. According to the polls, the strongest democratic opposition movement, the Alliance for Serbia, SZS, which is composed of ten parties and associations, and the Free Citizens' Movement, PSG, led by the well-known actor Sergej Trifunovic, have the support of only 16 to 17 per cent of voters.

This is far lower than the percentage of those who think Serbia is not moving in the right direction - 35 per cent - or the number who say their quality of their life is worse than it was five years ago - 37.7 per cent.

Many voters clearly do not see the opposition as having the potential to steer Serbia in the right direction after years of deterioration.

This distance is more than apparent in the protests against the Vucic regime that have been held almost continuously in Belgrade and other cities since November 2018.

Although the protests began after an assault on an opposition politician, Borko Stefanovic, people insisted that politicians should not take charge of these protests and that there should be as few of them...