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Serbia's Vucic concedes election defeat in historic win for student movement

137 points consumer451 1 hour ago 50 comments

input_sh 1 hour ago | parent

What a beautiful day. 14 years of oppression, absolute power, no media freedom, and the most ridiculously botted internet down the drain.

throwaw12 1 hour ago | parent

do you think, if there was real oppression people could even vote democratically and change their government?

I think you don't know what is oppression then.

(not downplaying how bad Vucic had been to Serbia, but the fact that people replaced him without violence and democratically means something still was in place)

stavros 1 hour ago | parent

What is the point of this "no true Scotsman" comment, exactly? To defend Vucic? Or to say that what the people managed to do wasn't very hard because they managed to do it?

falserum 20 minutes ago | parent

If you question was honest, most likely - a dislike for semantic bleaching.

Also, some (not me), have survived regimes like Tito, Assad or Saddam, they definitely would have different perspective on word oppression.

(A thing to get us on the same ground, lets call him extremely corrupt, very few will dispute that)

1718627440 59 minutes ago | parent

Would you also say for example, that there was no suppression in the GDR?

necovek 55 minutes ago | parent

There are certainly different levels of oppression and autocracy.

Here it was designed and made to look like a democracy, but it really required a 70% turnout and 50%+ of people voting against the ruling party for them to accept defeat, especially as there are still large vote thefts going on (to the order of 5-10% of the entire voting population). Basically, anything less than 50% would have put the country in turmoil and violence — again.

As a tidbit, we've got 6.4M registered voters (18+) in a country of 6.5M people. There are a few explanations about how that works, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

ncruces 32 minutes ago | parent

Dead people not removed from the registry?

ZnerflBerp 39 minutes ago | parent

"not downplaying how bad Vucic had been to Serbia".

But you are, though.

cromka 35 minutes ago | parent

Oppression is not binary. And modern forms make it extremely difficult to hold the oppressive governments accountable.

kergonath 34 minutes ago | parent

> do you think, if there was real oppression people could even vote democratically and change their government?

Sorry, they get no bonus point for accepting the elections’ results. It’s the bare minimum if they want to pretend to be in a democracy. It does not make them any less oppressive. See also Orban and the PiS.

Now they have some time in the opposition to build something credible to get back into power if they really want it.

johnisgood 56 minutes ago | parent

Same thing happened in Hungary earlier this year, after 16 years of Orbán (and FWIW, the two are / were "good friends").

Interesting times.

mrtksn 1 hour ago | parent

Meanwhile, in Bulgaria there was the presidential election that no one cared about so the turnout is in the %20 and the pro-Russian candidate severely underperformed. It was expected to be %47 vs %30, ended up being in the %30 for both the pro-Russian and the pro-western candidates.

Also the stronghold of Erdogan is crumbling with the collapse of $20B ponzi scheme where all the winners happen to be from Erdogan’s inner circle.

It’s overall a feeling of earth moving in Europe again.

timcobb 1 hour ago | parent

Le Pen? AfD?

mrtksn 1 hour ago | parent

What about them?

layer8 54 minutes ago | parent

Gaining ground in the two largest EU countries.

doginasuit 44 minutes ago | parent

Every movement has a counter movement.

demolitiontf2 36 minutes ago | parent

Is the HN political take always "right very bad left very good" with zero after-thought about why many European countries are turning right?

Labfox 18 minutes ago | parent

I mean those are extremists, not just right wing. I think if we had left wing extremists winning elections all over Europe there would be the same type of reactions.

timcobb 10 minutes ago | parent

These folks aren't "the right", they're people dishing out lazy answers to challening problems. They are, like Donald Trump, unserious and will undertake a state level smash and grab as soon as they're put into power, at levels previously unknown in the EU (like DJT here).

Lots of Europeans are turning "right" because they want easy answers to challenging problems. Like appeasing Russia is way easier than accepting that you need to fight Russia. Scary.

kergonath 23 minutes ago | parent

Le Pen is more or less dead politically. The RN is currently twisting itself into knots because they want to use the anti-government protests but are still supposed to be about law and order.

noeltock 8 minutes ago | parent

Le Pen is leading polls and is the polymarket fav by 2-3x.

orphereus 1 hour ago | parent

How is this Hackernews?

mrtksn 1 hour ago | parent

It reminds that those feelings invincible may actually not be.

usrnm 1 hour ago | parent

Like programmers, so sure of their fat paychecks just a few years ago? Deep

consumer451 56 minutes ago | parent

I think that’s a fair question.

Disrupting the incumbent authoritarian while surviving LRAD attacks is pretty darn bad ass, and teaches lessons to us all.

On the incumbent side, even when you seem to have all control on your side, you can go too far in your corruption(civility/product/whatever) and lose.

Very interestingly to me, SM’s network effects make them extremely resistant to this type of user-led correction. Or, am I taking this too far?

izend 51 minutes ago | parent

Agreed, why should serbia get a thread and not BC's massive flip from far left to conservatives with last night landslide win.

ytoawwhra92 46 minutes ago | parent

If you submit an article about that people who find it interesting may upvote it and it may end up on the front page, like this one.

masfuerte 44 minutes ago | parent

You didn't submit the BC story.

aliasxneo 37 minutes ago | parent

It still blows my mind that people on here delude themselves with thinking a pro-conservative piece would ever hit the main page for any meaningful period of time. Not that I care, I'm neither conservative nor do I come into HN thinking it's not heavily tainted one way. But how someone arrives at the opposite result still baffles me.

layer8 45 minutes ago | parent

The student protest movement “hacked” the authoritarian rule.

kergonath 19 minutes ago | parent

Someone posted and other people upvoted. But don’t worry, it will get flagged and drop out of the front page soon enough.

christkv 1 hour ago | parent

Is this new party cohesive enough or will it split into infighting?

necovek 46 minutes ago | parent

It is not really a party — it's a nomination list by the protest-organising students — and the people really voted against the ruling party.

The idea is for this to enable true democracy to re-appear, and then actual parties would battle it out in the next elections.

I'd say the risk to political stability in Serbia remains, but just like in any functioning democracy, what matters is that there is regular change and politicians understand that they are soon to be replaced (this avoids the levels of corruption that is multiples of base government project costs and actually cost lives).

puchatek 1 hour ago | parent

I'm just afraid Elon will invite the Russian but operators onto xAI servers in time for the midterms. Or they find another home in Kasachstan. I'm guessing they are quite mobile.

globalise83 53 minutes ago | parent

Just laughing quietly to myself at the thought there is someone out there who believes they are not already there.

Bluestein 43 minutes ago | parent

Insightful.-

aliasxneo 42 minutes ago | parent

I always get a laugh of HN's caricatures of Elon.

UltraSane 39 minutes ago | parent

It isn't a caricature. Elon already lets bots run rampant on Twitter.

aliasxneo 28 minutes ago | parent

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46345330

I'm talking about the overwhelmingly negative view portrayed here. I still remember back when he was on the front page of HN a few days in a row because supposably he did a Nazi salute.

postsantum 10 minutes ago | parent

'member when HN wasn't attracting technically illiterate people?

cdrnsf 55 minutes ago | parent

Good. The world needs fewer fascists and nationalists in power.

deadbabe 45 minutes ago | parent

By any means necessary.

holoduke 22 minutes ago | parent

The replacement party isn't any better though. It will not change anything in Serbia. Just like Hungary which might look like it's changed , but it's not. The political layer isn't remotely controlling those countries. Powerful institutions are. And they are not chosen.

cdrnsf 20 minutes ago | parent

The same is true of the US, up to a point. Should the democrats win in the midterms, they’re largely defined by being not their opponents. They’re still corporatist and unwilling to take meaningful stands or make significant changes.

izacus 12 minutes ago | parent

Saying Hungary hasn't changed has to be the biggest lie I've seen in a while.

velvetz 9 minutes ago | parent

I’m genuinely curious, what makes you think Hungary hasn’t changed?

jacobgorm 8 minutes ago | parent

Can you describe in detail what these powerful institutions are, and how they manage to hold back change?

evek 49 minutes ago | parent

Finally, time for the cleanup.

comrade1234 24 minutes ago | parent

This is great! I never understood the Serbian view of allying with a loser country like Russia. I assume it was all corruption and oligarchs.

baxtr 16 minutes ago | parent

They share many cultural elements.