I see no hope for this country anymore.
A few months ago, I believed that maybe the students would win, that the protests could finally remove this leech of an incompetent, corrupt president and bring at least a shred of order to Serbia. But nothing changed. The protests may not be officially over, but they feel dead, and the same man still sits in power, more erratic and disconnected by the day.
Serbia is officially branded as a “flawed democracy” that is undergoing democratic backsliding, according to analyses from organizations like Freedom House, but even that sounds too generous. What we truly have is a dictatorship disguised as choice: one man surrounded by loyal, unqualified lackeys who hold positions they don’t understand, while real experts are pushed aside or leave the country entirely. The result is everywhere, collapsing buildings, broken roads, failed institutions, all built by people who were never meant to build anything.
Crime goes unpunished because the guilty all “know someone,” and that someone always leads back to the same circle of power. The media are captured, the old are brainwashed, and the young are leaving. The few who stay and try to create something, small startups, independent thinkers, are crushed before they can even start. Corruption keeps its monopoly, and in doing so, ensures that innovation, like hope, cannot survive here.
By not having innovation, you are damning your country to failure. The only current sources of income for Serbia are exploiting its natural resources and selling real estate, something that should be a basic human right, not an industry. There is nothing being created here. No new products, no unique services, nothing that carries the mark of Serbian ingenuity or progress.
Unlike developed economies such as the US, the UK, or France, which thrive on innovation, technology, and global exports, Serbia feels hollow, like an imitation of an economy rather than a real one. We survive by draining what we already have instead of building something new. Our resources will run out, and our real estate bubble keeps inflating, pricing ordinary people out of their own cities. Without innovation, creation, or ownership of ideas, a country isn’t growing, it’s just waiting to collapse.