Academic Community Calls on Opposition to Endorse Student Movement Ticket Instead of Running

Serbian students (BetaPhoto/Dragan Gojic)

On Sept. 9, informal academic community groups in Serbia called on democratic opposition parties and movements to consider again endorsing the ticket of the university student protest movement and not running at the upcoming parliamentary elections.

"For years, you have been rightly saying that political office is not a privilege, but a responsibility. Now is the time for us, all together, to show that. We are not asking you to give up your political beliefs or for the differences among you to disappear. We are asking to set them aside for a moment in order to create the conditions together in which we will again be free to advocate our ideas and a free, normal Serbia," reads the open letter to the opposition.

In "the especially unequal" election conditions, competition among those who want democratic change should not become more important than creating the conditions in which such competition can find full expression, the letter added. "That is why it is the great responsibility of democratic opposition parties to base their decision on running in the election on the following question as the primary consideration: Does it increase or reduce the possibility of Serbia becoming a democratic country again? That question is more important than the number of seats, campaign visibility or who gets to say tomorrow that they were right," the academic community's letter read.

Students, professors, teachers, farmers, lawyers, artists, journalists, civic movements and opposition parties are the victims of a regime that has put the state and institutions in the service of personal interests instead of the people's, the letter said. The letter's signatories include teachers and researchers from the informal groups Rebel University, the Free State University of Novi Pazar, the Network of Academic Solidarity and Engagement and the University of Art Forum.