The Quiet Anniversary – October 5

The Quiet Anniversary – October 5

People were waiting for radical changes, hoping for democracy, dreaming about a happier life, but today this date is talked about more through the lens of betrayed trust, violence, and failed expectations.

The political parties that were at the forefront of the protests are far from what they fought for on October 5, and many people believe that today the situation is even worse than before.

This year, the Democratic Party virtually ignored the date, more preoccupied with the election of the new party leader Dragan Šutanovac, and it turns out that the then leader of the October changes Zoran Đinđić seems to be mentioned more often by the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, led by the very former ferocious opponents of Đinđić.

October 5 today is a topic among the frustrated citizens, as well as those who were on the streets; politicians' statements are rare, and events dedicated to this date are even rarer.

Only an occasional protests leader talks about Đinđić, and Zoran Živković, leader of the New Party, places some of the blame for the missed opportunities on the “supermodels” of October 5.

“Today the situation is bad because we missed a lot thanks to those whom I like to call the supermodels of October 5 and who were God knows where at the time, and who then through unfortunate circumstances became part of the government in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Our then leader Zoran Đinđić and I are also to blame because we weren’t consistent in following through with the revolution,” says Živković.

As he said, this revolution would entail the introduction of lustration and punishment of “all those with blood on their hands and dirt on their conscience.”

Around the same time, SPS leader Ivica Dačić, after splitting with the Democrats with whom he personally made “historic peace,” repeated his views on October 5. Albeit indirectly, while talking about the coup in Turkey.

The only out of all the leader of former DOS who still today holds a position of Minister, Rasim Ljajić, said that the present Serbian Government continues to realize the key goals and values that were not realized on October 5, 2000.

The modest statements were joined by an occasional politician from the parliamentary benches, a October 5 is seen as the date that launched the European and democratic future of Serbia.

“Serbia’s slow tempo of changes cannot be the fault of only those who were at the forefront of October 5. Slowness is a problem in society as a whole and a depreciation of October 5 by those who opposed changes fundamentally,” says former president of the Social Democratic Union and MP Žarko Korać.

LDP leader Čedomir Jovanović says that the job that was started on October 5 is not finished.

And while many see October 5 as the paving of modern times for Serbia, there are those in the Serbian Parliament who say that the downside is the abuse by western agencies.

“The front side of October 5 was the absolutely justified desire of the majority of citizens in Serbia to change a regime they were simply fed up with and to incite democratic change. The other side of the coin was the abuse by western agencies and politicians who took Serbia into the criminal privatizations, the destruction of the domestic economy, the loss of national sovereignty, and the wrong political direction,” says Dveri’s leader Boško Obradović.