The Serbian Renewal Movement, led by the charismatic Vuk Draskovic, had insisted since the war in Kosovo ended that the time was not right for street demonstrations. The stunning news from Leskovac, which is controlled by Milosevic's Socialists but where the Serbian Renewal Movement is the main opposition group, appears to have forced the hand of Draskovic. His party announced Wednesday that it will take charge of a rally in Leskovac on Thursday night. A senior adviser in the party, Ognjen Privbicevic, offered this explanation for Draskovic's sudden and seemingly opportunistic change of strategies. Things are changing so quickly here.
Nothing is predictable.
This is the first rule. Milan Bozic, the deputy mayor of Belgrade and a top leader in the Serbian Renewal Movement, said that all political parties in Serbia have underestimated both the depth of popular anti-Milosevic feeling and its power to bring people to the streets. Djindjic, a key leader of the Alliance for Change, a coalition of opposition groups, and a rival of Draskovic, delivered a rousing, if vague, speech on Tuesday that envisioned simultaneous daily rallies in towns across the country as well as a general strike. Djindjic said he expects the Serbian Orthodox Church, which last month demanded that Milosevic resign and which has since been bitterly condemned on state television, will soon join the opposition and ring church bells across the country to call Serbs out on the nationwide general strike. The timing and the planning for that strike are not yet clear, according to Milan Protic, also a leader of the Alliance for Change.