Former President Believes Time Is Right for General Strike

Boris Tadic (Beta/Milos Miskov)

The situation is ripe for a general strike because the state of affairs is such that the point of no return was passed when a female student of the Belgrade Faculty of Law taking part in a road blockade was hit by a car, Boris Tadic, the leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party who served two terms as Serbian president, said on Jan. 24.

He told the Danas daily that there was undoubtedly still some fear among a portion of the population, but that there was also no doubt that the fear had begun to break in the face of the student protests' energy and that the domino effect of people freeing themselves from fear had started.

Regarding a repeat announcement of the forming of a so-called people's movement, a campaign that is beginning in Jagodina on Jan. 24, Tadic said that the authorities themselves were thereby admitting that the Serbian Progressive Party was "a rotten organization whose shelf life is expiring."