“Students will liberate the world!”! Blockade of the Freedom Bridge in Novi Sad; Photo: Mašina

The student protests in Serbia, which have meanwhile grown into a broader social rebellion over the past four months, seem to be slowly entering a new phase. After we had the largest protest ever recorded in Belgrade in March, as well as a violent attempt to break up that protest, it is quite clear that the authorities have no intention of either stepping down or fulfilling the students’ demands, of which there are now six.

In addition to the original four, demands related to a transparent investigation into the use of a sound cannon and a request to investigate who allowed President Aleksandar Vučić to enter among immunocompromised individuals at the University Clinical Centre of Serbia, where patients injured in the Kočani tragedy were being treated, have been added.

In recent days, in order to find a solution to exit the deep political crisis, the same or very similar proposals are being heard. The loudest are those that contain two words in their content – expert government and transitional government. However, not every transitional government and proposal in that direction is exactly the same. If we observe these proposals more deeply, it is clear that the imagined expert governments are different by nature.

Transitional and/or Expert Government – Source of Solutions or Source of New Problems?

That a transitional and expert government are being imposed as the main solutions for exiting the crisis was quite clear given the moves of different sides in the protest. Thus, in almost two days, we had proposals of more or less the same concept from three different sides. The Proglas initiative came out with an earlier idea, advocating for a so-called transitional government of social trust whose basic goals would have to be fulfilling student demands and preparing the ground for free elections. With the note that all those involved in the protest should gather around the idea.

Then we heard a similar proposal from Miloš Jovanović, leader of the New DSS, who believes that a transitional government is currently the most realistic option and that, in that sense, as with Proglas, the goal would have to be free and democratic elections, offering himself as the leader of a broader front. As in the previous case, the problem is that we do not have a clearly defined or presented concept of what this transitional government would actually look like, who would constitute it, and how to exert pressure on the ruling coalition to agree to such a proposal. Additionally, the proposal about elections is not something that students in the plenums have offered and considered as a solution to the crisis. In other words, neither Proglas nor Miloš Jovanović, nor anyone earlier from the opposition, have informed us about the mechanisms of pressure through which they would achieve their political goal.

On top of all this came a proposal from several faculties from the University of Novi Sad, faculties and higher education institutions from Novi Sad, Subotica, and Zrenjanin about an expert government as the only solution to exit the crisis. Their logic is that it is crucial to fulfil the students’ demands, and it is clear that these demands will not be fulfilled by the future newly elected Government, at the head of which Vučić has appointed Dr Đuro Macut, an expert – endocrinologist and professor at the Faculty of Medicine. The students who presented the proposal advocate for a government of independent experts, also proposing criteria by which experts would be selected.

What are the key problems with such proposals? Apart from what has already been said about not having fully elaborated mechanisms of pressure for those who are in the protest to have their proposals respected by the ruling coalition, there are also problems in the very understanding of either a transitional or expert government, even if they were to happen. Even if the ruling structures agree to a transitional government, what would be the distribution of decision-making power in such a transitional government? The question is who would take the lead and how. Would those who are part of the ruling establishment agree to proposals regarding, for example, topics of electoral conditions reform, if such electoral conditions, in which they achieve a dominant majority, suit them perfectly? If they would not, how would the other side in the transitional government force them to do so? In any case, a transitional government under these conditions could very easily lead to an even stronger deepening of the political crisis due to internal disagreements, even if the ruling structures accept it as a concept.

Many refer to the example of the government in the period between the October 5 changes and the parliamentary elections of December 2000 when discussing a transitional government. But there is one fundamental difference here. DOS had won the presidential elections then and had strong blackmailing capital. Their transitional government was legitimised by Vojislav Koštunica’s victory in the presidential elections, the civil defence of electoral results, and the overthrow of Milošević as the man who was the personification of overall socio-political power. We do not have such a situation now. The opposition has not won any elections, and the question is how they will come to them when it is increasingly certain that we are closer to a Government reconstruction.

The problems with an expert government, however, are somewhat different, although they carry similar problems as transitional governments.

Expert-Politician: Is That a Guarantee for Successful Reforms?

If we were to try to more closely define the concept of an expert, in the simplest terms, these would be people who, based on their many years of experience and acquired knowledge and skills, are specialists in a particular field. Already from such a defined concept, we can notice, or at least sense, certain sources of problems.

First, an expert in some field usually sticks to their areas. They are mostly not interested in, or they distance themselves from, knowledge and skills they do not possess. Engaging in politics in a practical sense is almost never a primary imperative for them. So it is very difficult to force an expert in a field to voluntarily enter politics, especially in the context of the deep socio-political crisis in which we live.

The second thing is that despite someone’s eloquence and expertise, we cannot know whether the recipe that the expert proposes will give the desired results. In this case, will the expert know how and in what way the institutions that have been stuck in clientelism, nepotism, corruption, and dysfunctionality for decades should be reformed?

Why would precisely their application of the remedy be adequate, and not that of another expert from the same field? Would there be internal conflicts among experts regarding the practical application of steps for the purpose of institutional reform? Society as a category cannot be reduced to strictly experimental conditions in which, under controlled conditions, certain samples always give certain consequences, so we know what to expect. Equations with multiple unknowns would open up.

And as the third and perhaps most important point, what are the guarantees that the expert will not be susceptible to pressures from higher (read: political) instances, which would impose their own solutions and through politically grabbed power blackmail the expert into not being able to decide completely or fully independently on moves that would lead to reforms? Are their expertise resistant to daily politics and the interests of the powerful?

We currently do not have a better example than the new Prime Minister-designate Đuro Macut. Does his undisputed expertise in the field of medicine he practices guarantee that he will be immune to pressures from politicians, or one politician who appointed him? It seems that it does not. Likewise, if an expert also gains political power, how will we know that they will not abuse it? Is their expertise a guarantee for this?

Experts are not blank slates. They also have their social worldviews outside of scientific fields, which can completely conflict with the majority social worldviews. It can easily happen that, precisely based on the authority of an expert with gained political power, experts make decisions in favour of a narrow minority that possesses certain socio-political power, and not in favour of the majority.

These are just some of the possible problems with experts. But not all expert governments are the same. These would be the characteristics of experts imposed “from above”. But what about the possibility of an expert government arising “from below”?

The Only Somewhat Meaningful Expert Government – One That Would Come “From Below”

A logical political sequence of events after the students’ call for organising assemblies and direct decision-making among citizens at the local level would be the symbiosis and integration of plenum and assembly direct democracy into a broader social movement. The backbone of the movement should precisely be the students in blockades and citizens in assemblies, along with all those parts of society that have been encouraged to undertake certain forms of strikes, such as educators, farmers, and the like. Such a broad social movement would include all those who would like to politically participate on new foundations and would be an ideal and broad base for drawing and crystallising new cadres and forms of democratic decision-making.

As it is quite certain that this government will not fully fulfil the students’ demands, the character of the mass movement would have to be centred around two basic issues that are interconnected, and which aim at a change of government – the issue of the fight against corruption and the issue of institutional reform. A broader social anti-corruption and reform movement in this constellation of forces represents the highest reach of political struggle, and due to its massiveness, it would have to function on multiple levels.

The first level would be all students and citizens in plenums and assemblies who would make individual decisions at their faculties and in their local communities. This is the broadest circle of those who participate, propose, and make political decisions directly. The second level are legitimately and directly elected representatives of assemblies and plenums who would together form the umbrella organisation of the mass movement. They would be elected as delegates who, after a certain time, would become removable, without the right to run again as delegates, in order to satisfy the principles of removability, direct democracy, and the right for everyone to elect and be elected.

The third level would be those members of assemblies and plenums sorted into special working groups for the preparation of a final document through which they would define how and in what way to reform each subsystem within the overall social system. Working groups would be established by voting in plenums and assemblies. In a certain sense, these would be proposed and voted delegated experts from different fields, making the anti-corruption mass reform movement a kind of combination of what is called direct democracy and the rule of experts.

Working groups could be related to the most important sectors, such as education, media, agriculture, judiciary, security system, police and military, economy, and the like. Experts from working groups would, through the umbrella organisation of the mass movement and delegates in them, establish a connection with broader plenums and assemblies, to which they would directly answer, and which would in turn exercise popular control over them. The selection of experts in various working groups would go “from below” – by proposal, consideration, and direct voting.

The criteria for an expert from certain fields would also be established in plenums and assemblies, by proposing and voting on the criteria that an expert in working groups would have to fulfil. Experts would have an obligation to inform plenums and assemblies in shorter time periods through delegates from the umbrella organisation of the mass movement about their own work, how far they have come with the plan and programme of reform, as well as about practical steps of implementing these reforms (say every 7 or 14 days). If they could not do this, or if they deviated from the set goals, they would be subject to replacement by other subsequently voted experts.

Through working groups, experts for separate fields would act with the primary goal of creating a common political programme and methods through which institutional reforms of the existing system would be carried out, and at the same time, this would have to be the programme of the movement supported by plenums and assemblies, through the second level – elected delegates.

Only after that would conditions be created for meaningful political struggle, which would establish solid foundations for a mass movement “from below” with clear programmatic goals and solutions within the political struggle against the government that does not want to fulfil the demands. At the same time, a completely new socio-political opposition bloc would be created, composed of students and citizens “from below”, parts that are delegated “from below”, for which direct voting took place, which are removable, have a time limit on their actions, and experts in working groups who tailor the plan on how and in what way to reform different parts of society.

Such a bloc would certainly have mass support from citizens, especially those who make up the majority of society and do not believe in the existing political system, the existing electoral process, and parties of both the government and opposition. In other words, the movement would not only be opposition to autocratic ruling structures that will not fulfil the demands but to the entire wrongly structured socio-political system that has dominated for more than three decades.

Only through such a mass movement, through which socio-political crystallisation of cadres “from below” would be carried out, would there be a selection of legitimate experts according to the will of the majority. Expert governments that arise through direct appointment from influential socio-political groups, circles, and elites are not necessarily effective because they do not crystallise through broader social strata, nor are they subject to popular control, potentially only leading to changes of elites in high positions and their reproduction in the highest social positions, and the continuation of the trend of their closure at the top of society. System reform in these scenarios usually becomes a secondary matter.

Such appointment of experts “from above” carries a potential problem. If such a choice occurs, no one guarantees us that they will not throw their expertise under the feet of political powerholders because of the backing that an expert gains through direct appointment by the holders of power and other socially influential groups.

A real example of this are other experts, former officials, such as ministers Radulović, Krstić, and Vujović. All came as experts, but their reforms or attempts at reforms did not drastically affect broader social strata, but precisely those who placed them in those positions, for the purpose of strengthening their hold on power. Why? Because broader social strata did not appoint them to positions of experts in the government. Rather, those or the one who is the holder of absolute social power did.

Instead of a Conclusion: No Effective Expert Government Without a Mass Movement

It is not difficult to conclude why such a rule of experts “from below”, crystallised through a mass movement, is difficult to achieve. It is clear that we have stalled at the very first step. The key is to create a base for political struggle. And it lies exclusively in creating a broader mass movement. It seems that over the past four months, although there have been attempts, there was no courage to step forward more strongly with this idea and for students and citizens in the protest to enter the whole story even more unitedly and in solidarity. This does not mean that the results achieved so far should be challenged, because if we observe the context in which we have lived for over 12 years, it is clear that everything that has happened so far is something unexpected and certainly significant in the struggle for awakening broader social strata. But that is not enough.

Without a broad mass movement as a base, based on plenums and assemblies as a system of direct decision-making, delegated representatives through the umbrella organisation of the movement, and experts in working groups elected “from below”, who would be accountable to broader social strata through the principle of popular control, we cannot hope for successes of any new forms and proposals of transitional and expert governments. Because any other forms of such systems of governance cannot have direct and strong control of broader social strata in whose interest they should work, which gives them a certain possibility to “disconnect from the people”, working in favour of the minority that possesses social power.

Nemanja Drobnjak