Former Rector: Students Are a Result of Everything That Has Been Happening over the Past 35 Years

Protest in Belgrade on March 15 (BETAPHOTO/MILAN ILIC)

Former Belgrade University rector Branko Kovacevic (2006-2012) said on June 26 that student protests in Serbia were a result of everything that had happened in the country and society in the past 35 years adding that they have “diagnosed society."

“Students are the result, not the cause. The cause is the state of society. This protest began back with education workers. The entire school system is on the verge of collapse,” Kovacevic told the NIN weekly. He said that everything happening today was the result of the 1990s and had been going on for 35 years since sanctions were introduced against the country.

“We were excluded from the international community then and the result was the appearance of corruption. We destroyed the economy, so corruption became a mechanism of survival. A small country like Serbia could not survive the sanctions without repercussions. The criminalization of society ensued, the smuggling of gasoline, tobacco, the mafia… This is the price that we have been paying for 35 years,” Kovacevic said.

Speaking about a protest announced for June 28, Kovacevic said that students wanted to maintain tension, to prevent that which was done from being forgotten and keep up the energy in some way. As for the blockades that have been lasting since November last year, Kovacevic said that they were the right way to fight at that time, to draw attention and mobilize the public, but that the students “made a mistake.” “they made a mistake by expecting that these institutions would start working and that we would enter a normal state of some kind, followed by elections and that all of this would be over quickly,” he said.