We are all familiar with the shortcomings of government. Political leanings aside, who among us has not felt that corruption and lack of accountability exist in government bodies? In the case of the Novi Sad railway station collapse in Serbia those factors were the catalyst to something quite extraordinary happening.
We live in an age where governments seem hostile to the will of the common people. In response to Australia’s largest ever public demonstrations, the anti-war protests against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, we received a clear message: the government will not change course in response to public pressure. This seems a curious position given that the dēmos part of democracy literally refers to the common people.
Similarly the current Labor government has seemed curiously deaf to approximately three quarters of all Australians that support greater controls on gambling.
I am not aware of anyone standing on a soapbox and proclaiming modern democracy is the pinnacle of government systems. As Churchill famously remarked to the UK House of Commons ‘democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried’.
Many in Serbian society recognised the presence of corruption and weak accountability prior to 2024 and the spark of change was triggered by government mishandling and lack of accountability for the collapse of the concrete canopy of the main railway station, killing pedestrians below.
Protests and blockades were enacted but a year later not one person had been tried let alone convicted.
Rather than slipping into despondency, and in adherence to the finest principles of peaceful protest, the students of Serbia dreamed up a new plan to remove corruption and restore the rule of law by replacing the government by outcompeting it at the polls.
Mundane enough you might say, but there is something more. They didn’t seek to install themselves into power; instead they identified upstanding members of society including university professors, doctors, farmers and cultural figures to be their candidates and drove the campaign to victory.
The students themselves have been brilliantly demure in the sense that media interviews with students rarely feature the same person twice. They are not seizing power, they are enacting change in a system that has gone rotten.
We can only imagine their delight when Serbia’s outgoing president, Aleksandar Vučić, conceded defeat with no single leader to concede to, only the Student List and by extension the people.
It is easy to believe ourselves democratically powerless but united and with the courage of our convictions we have the power to rebuild society for the better.
Guest Editorial, Ewan Willis
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