What we don’t see from the opposition are well-considered strategies. Today’s parties are incapable of making such enduring, large and significant mental endeavours. Their cognitive potential doesn’t extend beyond the confines of banalised mass, folk, culture
It is important that the opposition has entered parliament. Better any opposition than none at all. I’m not convinced that we’ll always hear the precise opposite opinion to the positions of the ruling parties. Party pluralism has existed in Serbia for several decades, but there’s almost no ideological pluralism. A hegemonic mono-ideological order is in force. Even during the time of the socialist Yugoslavia, within the framework of a single party system, there was more political pluralism than there is today.
I don’t know, in even the least precise overview, who watches TV broadcasts of parliamentary sessions, but experience shows that parliamentary speech doesn’t play a crucially important role in shaping the political views of voters. At least that’s been the case to date. Will the opposition give a performance of (highly unlikely) political creativity and originality that will succeed in drawing attention to the most important and unestablished topics? The dominant topics remain “state-building” and “the national interest” etc., without a serious rational explanation of what these terms encompass. Other social issues that are more essential aren’t even on the agenda for discussion that would culminate in tangible political implementation. The National Assembly – especially when the cameras are rolling – is predominantly, more or less, an amateur training ground for learning rhetorical and very often banal stunts, without any kind of social significance whatsoever.
Will some MP, uncompromisingly, boldly, without fear of being ostracised by the party and by turning their back on monoideological speech, shift to providing a rational explanation of some social issue? We await that historical beat
The choice of heads of parliamentary groups means nothing more than the possibility for agitation in opposition to party interests. Will some MP, uncompromisingly, boldly, without fear of being ostracised by the party and by turning their back on mono-ideological speech, shift to providing a rational explanation of some social issue? We await that historical beat.
I’m not interested in the tactics the opposition would use to escape the impersonality of parliament, provided the tactics aren’t what they must be: practical politics founded on an open, serious conception and leading to strategies. We don’t see that. The building of a conception is painstaking and enduring job on a foundation of ideas and the careful study of social reality. Today’s parties are incapable of making such enduring, large and significant mental endeavours. Their cognitive potential doesn’t extend beyond the confines of banalised mass, folk, culture. I see the deputy parliamentary speaker posts primarily as clerical-bureaucratic appointments.
As an ordinary citizen from the bottom of the social scale, I expect the rational (very small) part of the opposition to move towards seriously articulating real, existential social and group interests. I expect it to organise a series of open civil and expert debates; to diligently record the views expressed, and particularly the questions; to systematise all that and – again in an open atmosphere – present to citizens what (I insist on that) those rational questions and wants are.
I don’t expect anything worthwhile from the ruling party conglomerate, nor am I disappointed by their policies. That’s because I wasn’t previously spellbound by them. And the opposition and the so-called opposition have so far betrayed us with their promises many times. That’s how tough the opposition’s job is. Will the opposition grasp it in that way? It has the right to a democratic election, regardless of what it’s like.
