PROFESSOR BEŠIĆ: “The biggest challenge for the Student List will be dismantling the party system and preventing the state from being captured again!”

Miloš Bešić, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade, said that the constitution of the newly elected Serbian Parliament, following the Student List’s election victory, marks the beginning of a lengthy process that will bring numerous challenges for the new government at several levels.

“The first level will be the work of Parliament itself,” Bešić said on Radio Television of Serbia, predicting that the outgoing government, now in opposition, would be highly destructive and aggressive and would continue its strategy of challenging the government and the country’s direction, using its “familiar vocabulary of insults.”

Bešić stressed that a major task would follow, since the Student List’s programme essentially represents a comprehensive system for establishing a functioning state.

“This is about establishing a system in which you reject what was, in effect, a party-controlled state with a pronounced model of authoritarian rule. There will be numerous challenges in this process, and we will have to see how the representatives of the Student List address all these problems,” Bešić said.

He added that other issues would then come to the fore, concerning the country’s domestic and foreign policy, the economy, and the way institutions and relevant authorities respond to specific challenges, such as the situation surrounding the Oil Industry of Serbia (NIS) and the stability of the dinar exchange rate.

“It will be very interesting to see what their political positions will be, as well as the concrete policies pursued by the representatives of the Student List and the new government, which I believe we can expect relatively soon, much sooner than the legally prescribed 90-day deadline. So, we will see how they respond to all these issues,” Bešić said.

According to him, Serbia has undergone an intensive process of state capture by a single party over the past 14 years. Now, for the first time, there is a clear political actor that openly wants to put an end to this practice, which will be “an extremely difficult task.”

Even if all structures are cooperative, there is a certain inertia within the system, which is accustomed to waiting for decisions to be made by the party and its leading authority before implementing them down the hierarchy, “very often in violation of the law or on the borderline of what would be legally permissible.”

Dismantling this system, he added, is the biggest task facing the Student List, and he believes it is also the most important one in terms of the public support its representatives have received.

“SNS would suffer a catastrophic defeat in the presidential election”

Bešić also stressed the importance of avoiding the trap of establishing a new party-based system.

“Simply put, one party replaces another, then captures the state, then another party comes along and captures the state again. Ending this kind of state capture by political parties and addressing the problem in the way the students have envisioned is the greatest goal that can be achieved following the changes that have taken place,” Bešić said.

Regarding the presidential election, Bešić said that the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) might decide to withdraw from the race because it has no candidate and would suffer a catastrophic defeat.

“They created an authoritarian model in which one man makes all the decisions and there is no personnel alternative for key positions. Even if they had won these elections—which, fortunately, they did not—they would have faced a major problem in finding a candidate,” he said, adding that SNS’s strategy would therefore be to obstruct and undermine the current government, which it would do proactively.

“So, instead of explaining why a rigged tender was held for a job that was never completed, even though the money was paid without a contract, it is much easier for them to wage a political battle by claiming that the representatives of the Student List are traitors to the Serbian people, resorting to their familiar repertoire of accusations that this is a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign countries,” Bešić said.

Bešić advised the Student List that its first response should be strict adherence to the law and the prosecution of all wrongdoing that has taken place, which would cause a large part of SNS’s arguments to fall apart.

“SNS would suffer a catastrophic defeat in the presidential election”

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