by Stephen Karganovic
Just as a week ago we speculated might happen, Serbia’s mass anti-regime protests, which started as if on cue the day after the apparently “not so free and unfettered” April 2 Presidential election, have now abated significantly, but without any obvious public reason.[1] None of the protesters’ objections (many of them legitimate and sensible) were seriously entertained by the authorities. If we take the Easter weekend as the watershed separating daily mass protests involving tens of thousands in twenty cities and towns across Serbia from post-holiday crowds, shrunken to barely one or two hundred, one must wonder: what changed over that weekend? Did thousands of former dissidents suddenly get religion, decide to turn the other cheek to the regime, and stay at home? Or was there from the beginning of these “spontaneous” protests more to it than met the eye?