General
Serbian Leader, Trying to Quell Protests, Jettisons a Key Ally
Demonstrations around Serbia pose a challenge to the decade-long hold on power by President Aleksandar Vucic, who spurred his prime minister to step down.
Battered by weeks of student-led street demonstrations, Serbia’s strongman leader Aleksandar Vucic on Tuesday sacrificed his prime minister in an effort to calm protests that had engulfed towns and cities, posing a major challenge to his decade-long grip on power.
Prime Minister Milos Vucevic, a close ally of President Vucic and nominal leader of their Serbian Progressive Party, said he was stepping down so as “not to further raise tensions in society” — just hours after Mr. Vucic demanded “an urgent and comprehensive reshuffle of the government.”
A master at maneuvering within Serbia’s deeply polarized politics, and between Russia and the West, Mr. Vucic has a long record of throwing allies overboard, at least for a time, and catching fractious opposition parties off balance. Opponents have struggled to challenge him in elections but have jumped on protest movements led by students and others outside party politics.
It is unclear whether the departure of the prime minister will calm, or perhaps even escalate, the nationwide protests, fueled by public anger over the deaths of 15 people in a November structural failure at a newly renovated railway station in the northern city of Novi Sad.
Students, who have barricaded campuses for weeks, gathered on Tuesday outside the governing party’s headquarters in Novi Sad, where unidentified pro-government supporters had beaten up several protesters on Monday evening. The outside wall of the party’s office was covered with graffiti reading “Murderers,” “Thieves” and other insults. Anti-government activists also resumed protests in Nis, a large city in the south.
Mr. Vucic promised on Monday to meet one of the student protesters’ principal demands — the release of contracts and other documents relating to the reconstruction of the Novi Sad railway station, which was carried out by a Chinese company and its subcontractors. On Nov. 1, a concrete canopy suspended over the building’s entrances collapsed, crushing the people below it.