Sociologist: Protesters in Serbia Need Opposition Parties to Finish the Job

Srecko Mihailovic (BETAPHOTO/MEDIA CENTAR BELGRADE)

Sociologist and researcher Srecko Mihailovic has said that participants in the ongoing protests in Serbia need to understand that they need the opposition political parties to "finish the job."

He told the Danas daily that whether the demonstrators' distancing from the opposition parties would have an impact (and to what extent) was questionable, adding that according to theory, in modern political systems a good result could rarely be achieved without political parties.

"The question is: Will the finalization of the current protests, now not only students', require cooperation between the opposition parties and the informal leadership of the existing protests? If an agreement is reached on coordinated action, that will be very interesting and uncertain cooperation between the protesters who have managed to achieve unity in action among students of different faculties, in different cities and of different professions and ages, and on the other hand we find something that is completely opposite to student unity, even if at least relatively," said Mihailovic.

As he put it, on the other side stands a fragmented opposition, with parties often at odds with each other, who even when they do manage to reach an agreement end up dropping it at the last minute.