Glisic Calls Student List 'Manulaci,' Liars and Fraudsters
SNS Executive Board president Darko Glisic told a rally in Baljevac that the Student List is a gathering of women-haters, liars and fraudsters, five weeks before the October 25 election.
Darko Glisic, president of the Executive Board of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and caretaker minister for public investment, said on Sunday, September 20, at a pre-election rally in Baljevac, a village in the municipality of Raska, that the Student List is “a gathering of women-haters” and “a gathering of fraudsters.” The rally took place five weeks before the parliamentary election scheduled for October 25.
Glisic told the crowd that the election cycle marked a turning point between the country’s development and what he called a return to the past. He framed the choice for voters as one between two paths: economic betterment on one side, and cuts to wages and pensions on the other, attributing the second option to the Student List.
“We have 35 days left before we decide whether we take the path of economic betterment, peace, stability, higher wages, higher pensions, roads, hospitals and schools, or the path that means lower wages and pensions, as these ‘manulaci’ who call themselves the Student List are promising you,” Glisic said.
Accusations About the List’s Makeup, Without Evidence
The SNS Executive Board president then leveled a series of accusations against the list itself, claiming its candidates included neither workers nor students.
“They don’t have a single student, a single worker, a single farmer, there is nothing on that list except women-haters,” Glisic said, also calling the list’s representatives “recycled yellow thieves.”
Glisic backed neither claim, the list’s makeup or its alleged hatred of women, with any names or specific examples at the rally. Continuing on the activities and conduct of the Student List’s candidates and supporters, the minister used derogatory language to describe their public conduct in general.
Accusations of Street Blockades and Pressure on Citizens
Part of his address in Baljevac was devoted to the activities of Student List supporters outside the campaign itself, accusing them of breaking the law, blocking streets and pressuring citizens.
“Let me ask these ‘manulaci’, these wretches, is it constitutional to block streets, to attack people, to show up outside their homes, to torment them? Do you want to purge people, discard them, ride roughshod over them? You are nothing but common ‘manulaci’, liars and fraudsters,” Glisic said.
These accusations too, about blockades and pressure on citizens, came without any specific date, location or name to back them up. The SNS Executive Board president closed his address by saying Serbia must win at the election to protect the nation and the state from outside influence, without specifying what that influence was or where it supposedly came from.
Reactions, and Whether the Tone Will Soften Before October 25
As of publication, the Student List had not responded to Glisic’s claims from Baljevac, nor denied the accusations of involvement in street blockades and pressure on citizens that the minister made. Similar rhetoric toward the list, made up mostly of participants in last year’s student protests, has been repeated at other SNS pre-election rallies across Serbia in previous weeks, largely in the same tone and without new, verifiable claims.
Glisic’s appearance fits the tone of the SNS campaign ahead of October 25, in which the ruling party regularly portrays the opposition made up of student movement representatives as a threat to economic stability, wages and pensions.
The campaign formally runs for five more weeks. Whether the pace of addresses like the one in Baljevac eases in the meantime, or sharpens further as the October 25 election draws closer, remains a question that each new rally will answer, not announcements from party headquarters.
