First military parade in god knows how long time has been held in Belgrade on last chilly and windy saturday afternoon, couple of days ago. Naturally, i was there, but not so much because i like to watch uniformed men and fighter jets. It felt as this parade, first one after so many years was not organized by accident. Kosovo talks coming to an end, elections coming up, no, this had to be some sort of promotion for the ruling party and basically all other parties that had the chance to stand in front of the parliament while the soldiers and officers marched on in front of them.
Of course, to confirm all my doubts about why on earth would we want to have a military parade at all at this moment, Kostunica and Tadic used the opportunity to mention Kosovo more than couple of times.
Now, i have nothing against military parades in general, but i prefer to watch them from far away, for example in Russia, Belarus or Ukraine.
Another thing is that we actually had enough military parades here in the last decade or so: First, March 9th demonstrations in 1991, when Milosevic brought tanks on the street, another police drill in ‘96/’97 student protests, than we had this NATO aero meeting for more than 2 months in 1999, and one more police+military drill on October 5th 2000..
Btw, since the 10th anniversary of 96/97 protests is coming, expect to hear more about that in one of the following posts.
tags: Belgrade, politics, Serbia, military
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Excellent post, he’s up to no real good! I’ve nothing against military parades as such, people need a little tamaša from time to time, just so they aren’t TOO fooled by it all. Americans are real suckers for a good military parade btw! Except of course my pacifist-peacenik buddies!