Latest / Drive with John Perlman / Serbia's student led movement wins parliamentary majority

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Serbia's student led movement wins parliamentary majority · Drive with John Perlman

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  Speaker 1: Let's turn to something else then. Lots of important and
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  Speaker 1: consequential elections going on all over the world. Mandy Wiener
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: looked at the outcome in Brazil presidential election. They just concluded.
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  Speaker 1: She also looked ahead. Two very interesting interviews, by the way,
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  Speaker 1: to the Israeli elections coming up. There are the midterm
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  Speaker 1: elections in the United States and there are elections, of course,
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  Speaker 1: right here in South Africa. But a fascinating election taking
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  Speaker 1: place in Serbia. And this has led to what is
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  Speaker 1: being described as as a student-led movement, actually not only
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  Speaker 1: ousting the current government, but actually finding themselves in a
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  Speaker 1: position of power. The movement is called the student list. Now,
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  Speaker 1: we're used to student protests leading to societal change, but
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  Speaker 1: I'm not aware of a student-led movement actually taking power.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps I'm explaining it a little simplistically, but somebody who
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  Speaker 1: understands as well is my next guest, Branko Bircic. Bircic
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  Speaker 1: is the founder of Daily Maverick and himself a national
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  Speaker 1: of Serbia. Branko, welcome and thanks very much for your time.
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  Speaker 1: This is pretty remarkable. Will the students now step back
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  Speaker 1: and let a familiar bunch of politicians govern? Or is
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  Speaker 1: this a fundamental change that might see a fundamentally different
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  Speaker 1: kind of government? Good afternoon.
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  Speaker 2: Hello, John. Hello from London. Yeah, look, I mean, this
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  Speaker 2: was a very, very important event in so many ways. First,
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  Speaker 2: this was more than anything else a moral revolution. What
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  Speaker 2: actually incensed students finally was more than a decade of
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  Speaker 2: indecency and immorality that permeated the Serbian Progressive Party's rule
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  Speaker 2: and President Vucic himself. So what actually happened, many of
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  Speaker 2: those corrupt ideals disappeared. were obvious for everybody to see,
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  Speaker 2: but one of them was the construction of the railway
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  Speaker 2: station in the second biggest city, Novi Sad, in Serbia,
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  Speaker 2: which collapsed and killed 14 people. And that caused, that started,
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  Speaker 2: that was the moment when the students said, enough of this. Because, unfortunately,
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  Speaker 2: the political scene of Serbia deteriorated. President Vucic was an
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  Speaker 2: incredibly effective authoritarian. Yes. Who almost had opposition, ideal opposition,
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  Speaker 2: people who were just not serious. So... You know, the
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  Speaker 2: students had enough. And over the period of the last
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  Speaker 2: two years, they changed the political scene of Serbia. They protested.
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  Speaker 2: They protested for the points of morality. You see, the
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  Speaker 2: fascinating thing is that they accept that the Serbian constitution
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  Speaker 2: is a good document. Yes. They don't accept the fact that,
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  Speaker 2: you know, as every law it is, every law is
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  Speaker 2: as good as the people who apply it. And unfortunately,
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  Speaker 2: in the Serbian case, the law was applied by some
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  Speaker 2: of the worst people in our history. So eventually they
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  Speaker 2: decided that they can't actually rely on the current opposition.
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  Speaker 2: to lead the fight against the presidential elections. So they
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  Speaker 2: started their own electoral list and they've done something incredibly important.
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  Speaker 2: They chose a list of 250 people which were never
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  Speaker 2: involved in politics. Most of them were never involved in politics.
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  Speaker 2: So they were basically good, honorable experts. professors, scientists, you know,
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  Speaker 2: community leaders, sportists, artists. So they created this A list
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  Speaker 2: of people who did not have any political baggage and
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  Speaker 2: a list of people who have quite kind of very,
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  Speaker 2: very political views, but they all agree on the fact
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  Speaker 2: that laws should be, you know, abided and government institutions
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  Speaker 2: should not be corrupt. You know, basic stuff, you know,
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  Speaker 2: things that democracy is being made of. And they've done
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  Speaker 2: something incredible. Let me just explain. President Vucic, in many ways,
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  Speaker 2: was a political twin brother of Viktor Orban from Hungary. Right.
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  Speaker 2: And they've done exactly the same type of strategy and tactics.
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  Speaker 2: So President Vucic spent an insane amount of money to
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  Speaker 2: create a full control of a national level media. So
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  Speaker 2: he controlled... All the national TV frequencies he controlled, all
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  Speaker 2: the radio stations, and he controlled all the main newspapers.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you so much to Branko Birutic. Fascinating what's happening
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  Speaker 1: out in Serbia. Yeah, very, very interesting. Indeed, perhaps you
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  Speaker 1: live there or have lived there or know something about
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  Speaker 1: the country. Drop me a note on 072-702-1702. It's four o'clock.