Month: July 2014

July 17th witnessed one of the largest social protests in Serbia since the beginning of the global financial crisis. Around 10000 people, mainly public sector workers, marched through the streets of Belgrade against the “economic reform legislative package” including the latest incarnation of the Labour law. This will, among other things, severely deregulate the labour market, making it even easier for “entrepreneurs” (as capital owners and managers are lovingly referred to by the government controlled media) to sack workers and cut wages and severance pay (thus legalising practices already commonplace in contemporary Serbia), which has, in one form or another, been on the agenda of all post-Milosević governments in Serbia.

In the post-Yugoslav transition space, we have never – until now – found ourselves in a situation in which a single party has managed to win an absolute majority in parliamentary elections. But this is exactly what has happened in the recent elections in Serbia, where a faction that split from the ultra-right Serbian Radical Party, the Serbian Progressive Party, managed to win more than 50 percent of the vote.

An indication of what the new government and its Prime Minister, Aleksandar Vučić, will do in the coming period can be seen not just from their previous term in office when Vučić was the first deputy prime minister, but also from the recent election campaign, when it became abundantly clear that the focus of the new administration would be economic reforms.

Dear all, dear comrades, dear friends, dear (new) new Left,

We have broken the vicious circle of anticommunism in the post-Yugoslav context. What follows is a slightly longer piece on the campaign to give you a a sense of the historic results!

On the electoral campaign of United Left Coalition (ULC)

As you can imagine, we are more than happy to announce such an amazing result of the election! All the commentators say the ULC was the biggest surprise of the election.

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article was published in cooperation with the web-portal Bilten.Org

During May and June 2014, Romania was invaded by high-ranking officials: the US Vice President, the head of Pentagon, the head of CIA, the head of NATO, American senators, all having only one message: fight corruption! After which they added a few other messages: facilitate shale gas extraction, but only after increasing your defense budgets. Shale gas extraction is vital for your energy independence, said the Americans, and their Romanian fans forgot to tell them that Romania has already a very high level of energy independence, compared to the rest of Europe.

Dear Dragan Plavsic,

We extend our apology for publishing a text by Agon Hamza that contained a defamatory statement against you. We did that because we did not want to dismiss Agon Hamza’s point of view. We deeply regret that our publishing his text has had the effect of furthering his defamatory statement.

Sincerely, LeftEast editors

To follow the debate between Dragan Plavsic and Agon Hamza

1. Plavsic’s four-piece article [1] [2] [3] [4]

2.