Growing protests threaten Serbian leader

President Aleksandar Vucic is escalating his crackdown on protests that have shaken his increasingly authoritarian rule.

- By DUSAN STOJANOVIC

SERBIA staged a military parade Saturday amid a crackdown on protests.

What began as a small, student-led campaign against corruption has snowballed into one of the most turbulent protest waves in the Balkan country ina quarter of a century.

Rights groups and Vucic’s political opponents have warned of increasingly brutal tactics aimed at silencing a movement that has become the biggest challenge yet to his enduring grip on power.

On Saturday, Serbia staged a massive military parade in the capital, showcasing tanks, missile systems and fighter jets in what officials described as the country’s biggest display of army strength in its history.

Vucic reviewed the parade, which included about 10,000 troops, saying the show of force underscored Serbia’s ability to defend its independence and sovereignty.

Columns of troops marched through the New Belgrade district of the capital as crowds waved national flags, while aircraft roared overhead.

Nationalist roots

‘Vucic has ruled Serbia for more than a decade, reshaping its politics while drawing accusations of corruption and authoritarianism.

He began his political career in the 1990s as a hard-line nationalist in the Serbian Radical Party, becoming information minister under the brutal authoritarian leadership of Slobodan Milosevic. Vucic was notorious for his calls to punish independent media and his wartime rhetoric against Serbia’s neighbors, which he maintains to this day.

Serbia was defeated in the wars in the Balkans, Milosevic was ousted by a wave of protests in October 2000, and Vucie reinvented himself as a pro-European reformer. He co-founded the Serbian Progressive Party, which promised modernization and European Union integration, but he consolidated his power through populism, control of the media and a tight grip on state institutions.

Origins of protests