Jovanov Opens SNS Campaign in Kragujevac With Black Box

The Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia list officially opened its campaign for the snap parliamentary election set for October 25 in Kragujevac on Thursday, September 17. Overnight, a prefabricated container reading “Blockader Serbia” was installed at the fountain square in the city center, an exhibit called “Black Box, So We Never Forget.” It was opened by Milenko Jovanov, a member of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) presidency and a candidate for parliament on the list.

According to N1, the opening was also attended by fellow Kragujevac parliamentary candidates Natasa Jovanovic, Biljana Ilic Stosic and Miroslav Petrasinovic, along with party activists. N1 reported that the container displayed stones, wooden sticks and eggshell remains alongside LED screens playing footage of violence from the protests, with organizers also citing bottles and metal objects. SNS claims these items were used in incidents at protests and blockades over the preceding period.

“The blockaders are like this black box to you. Nobody knows what’s inside, and when you open it, violence jumps out,” Jovanov said at the opening of the installation, adding that anyone who steps into the container should judge for themselves what the blockaders actually had to offer.

According to SNS’s announcement, the container is meant to tour cities across Serbia. It will remain in Kragujevac for seven days, guarded by private security and police. Jovanov added that the installation’s goal is to show citizens what, in the SNS’s assessment, happened during the protests and blockades over the past year and a half.

“We want to show the citizens of Serbia what the blockaders were doing,” Jovanov said, arguing that the students behind the blockade offered “no plan and no program” of any kind. He also criticized their response to a call for talks that, he said, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic had extended earlier. “We received no response at all, just violence and chaos,” Jovanov said.

A similar installation, featuring photographs and footage from the protests, was already displayed once before, in late June, as part of an SNS rally near the Serbian National Assembly, Vreme reported at the time. The Kragujevac opening is, based on SNS’s earlier announcements, the first concrete event of the campaign following the party’s previous statement that it would hold a series of pre-election rallies across Serbia, capped by a final rally in Nis.

Nikola Vujcic, a professor from Kragujevac and a candidate on the Student List, also responded to the installation. He said the communal inspection service and police should examine it, adding that he personally would not be entering the container. He described the SNS campaign in Kragujevac as “the last gasp of a dying patient.” In his assessment, the move is an attempt by the party to portray students as enemies at a moment when, he believes, it is losing support.

N1 noted in its report that the entire display contained no mention whatsoever of police brutality against protest participants, even though that chapter of the protests and blockades had been the subject of numerous allegations and complaints over the preceding period. N1 also said it had sent an inquiry to the Kragujevac City Administration and the relevant inspection authority asking whether, and for how long, a permit had been issued for occupying public space, given that another SNS container has already been standing on the sidewalk on Kraljice Marije Boulevard for a month. According to the outlet, no response had come from either the City Administration or the inspection service.

Vujcic also announced that the student “Guardians of the Constitution” bicycle tour, which sets out from Belgrade and passes through Vojvodina and southern Serbia, is due to reach Kragujevac on September 26. Whether the Black Box will in fact travel on to other Serbian cities as announced, and how local authorities will react to it wherever it arrives, is a question next week of the campaign will answer.