Ivanka Popović: Repression is reaching its peak, elections offer a return to normality

Ivanka Popović says Serbia is living under a system that demands conformity from people who want to prosper. The former rector of the University of Belgrade says that pressure is especially visible in the treatment of education and in the demands placed on institutions and citizens.

She describes the authorities as increasingly focused on serving their own needs while treating citizens’ concerns as an inconvenience. In her view, repression against people who resist or disagree with the way the state operates has been intensifying and is approaching a peak.

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We are constantly witnessing this obsessive need of the authorities to satisfy only and exclusively their own needs, while citizens’ needs come second, as a necessary evil this government has to tolerate.

Popović says elections, if they take place soon, could provide an opening for change. She does not expect them to be held under normal conditions, as she says previous elections were not. She frames the vote as a referendum-like moment rather than an ideological contest, arguing that the government has suppressed social life and taken control of everything. For her, the central demand is a return to ordinary civic functioning.

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These elections primarily represent an opportunity for us to return to some normal forms of functioning.

She also rejected Education Minister Dejan Vuk Stanković’s claim that the idea of the engaged intellectual belongs to an outdated left-wing fantasy. Popović said intellectuals are engaged by their nature, while every citizen has rights and obligations that give them a civic role. She expressed hope that enough citizens are prepared to act so the country can function normally.

On the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš, where employees have not received salaries after refusing to become part of the newly established Faculty of Serbian Studies, Popović called the move “a very insidious step by the authorities.” She said withholding pay from cleaners, administrative staff, teachers and the dean amounts to punishing people who had no influence over the decisions. She also argued that the decision to create the new faculty was made unlawfully.

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A very insidious step by the authorities.