#RadioMoskva Election earthquakes in Serbia and Brazil Two extraordinary election results on the same day. Serbian President Aleksander Vucic was ousted in a general election by a student protest movement and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came from behind to win the Brazilian presidency for the fourth time – the first time ever the loser in the first round won in the second. In Serbia the “leaderless revolution” stormed to a victory to everyone’s surprise. The problem the Student List movement has now is who to pick as Prime Minister? And then they have an even bigger problem: how does a disparate group of rebels who basically campaigned on a “not Vucic” platform come together to form a coherent government with a coherent set of policies? Spoiler alert: it already looks like SL will be lukewarm on EU membership, adopt a strict neutrality policy, but warm EU ties, refuse to sanction Russia and continue to import Russian gas, and ban all weapons exports, which is bad news for Ukraine. It’s basically the same agenda that the Belarusian opposition leadership was proposing in the early days of that revolution; a nationalist popularist, us-first agenda that is increasingly prevalent in the new multipolar world in which we live, and ideas that are driving countries like Hungary and fuelling the shift to the far-right in Western Europe which have many of the same ideas. Vucic had overstayed his welcome. The rule-of-thumb is that the electorate gets thoroughly bored of any leader who stays in office for more than a decade – irrespective of how good they are. I remember the euphoria that followed Tony Blair’s election, and now Brits are totally sick of the sight of him. But that doesn’t automatically lead to a coup. Electorates also have an element of pragmatism: how appealing is the alternative? When Putin won his fourth term in office, he was asked if this was a democratic result to which he asked: “How long has Merkel been in office?” She was serving her fourth term. When she stood for that election, I was in Germany and people were fed up with “Mutti”, as she was known locally, but everyone had to admit that she was very good at her job and bit their lips and gave her another term. Many leaders use this ruse to overstay their welcome. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko’s nickname is “Batka” which means “Dad.” The late Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov was known as Turkmenbashi, or “father of the Turkmens.” They sell themselves as the old wise man you can’t do without – and make sure there is no one competent to stand against them. Ironically, in Serbia the “other guy” also doesn’t exist but he won anyway. After two and half decades in office, Putin is selling himself the same way, although he hasn’t stooped to a nickname; he just killed or exiled any viable opponent, so when the voters look down the list of candidates, they bite their lips and vote him in again – crude but effective as he still enjoys extremely high ratings in the polls. But he has been helped by the fact the Russian opposition is so fissiparous and the extraordinary pain of the Yeltsin-era; a huge factor in Russian politics is everyone is so much better off since Putin took over, the calculations is not to look for a leader that promises to “make things better” but keep a leader that ensures you hang onto what you already have. Still, the Yeltsin generation is starting to get old and the most recent Duma elections showed that even in Russia people are ready for a change and are looking at the Communist Party (KPRF) as the alternative. Both Vucic and Lula overstayed their welcome but in Serbia the people had had enough and got rid of him. Probably the thing that scuppered Vucic’s chances was the collapse of a roof at the Novi Sad station that killed over a dozen people, sparked riots two years ago, and radicalised the population. Lula is at the other end of the spectrum. I suspect in Brazil, the calculation was similar to the German’s view of Mutti or the Russian view of Putin: he has been in office too long but he has also engineered an extraordinary transformation where the Brazilian economy has flourished and as a BRICS nation is now a player on the global stage in the way that no Latin American country has since Argentina over a century ago. Today Brazil accounts for third of the GDP of all of the 20 countries that make up Latin America, become a commodities powerhouse, and has extremely low unemployment, despite some severe economic problems like high debt. Serbia’s result is also interesting as it shows democracy is at work, despite Vucic regularly being dubbed a dictator, or at least an authoritarian leader. He stepped down as president (his two terms were up) and stood for the job of Prime Minister and lost and stepped aside. Politics is rough in Serbia, but it is a democracy. The idea of Putin losing an election is unconceivable but Zelenskiy victory in the 2019 elections is very similar to Serbia’s story: Ukrainian politics is even rougher than Serbia’s, but there was a real race – a very close one – where Zelenskiy defeated the incumbent former President Petro Poroshenko running on the promise of a better life – an anticorruption platform he has failed to deliver on in spectacular fashion. The idea of Lukashenko, Turkmenbashi and his son or grandson, the two Berdimukhamedovs, giving up power is equally inconceivable, but there is another lesson here: if you try and fix the result too blatantly you run the risk of sparking a revolution. Lukashenko is the best example, as he got absolutely trounced in the 2020 election by Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya (Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya) and was forced to turn the results upside down to give himself a landslide victory setting off the biggest mass demonstrations the country has ever seen. Putin made the same mistake by fixing the 2011 Duma elections unleashing 100,000-strong demonstrations that nearly brought him down. Vucic must have been aware that if he did not step aside he ran the risk of the same. But those demonstrations don’t always work. This week also saw the 699 day of mass demos in Tbilisi following an election there stolen by Georgian Dream that is controlled by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili that is no closer to ousting the government than it was on day one. Despite the huge turnout in Minsk, that failed to oust Lukashenko who was “re-elected” for another five years last year. What are the factors that make these mass movements successful? Social media now plays a crucial role as it has inverted the political pyramid: the elites on top running things and the hoi polloi on the bottom and voiceless. The Belarusian revolution was a Nexta revolution by committee; a social media app that allowed a leaderless crowd to coordinate themselves in face of the security forces like an ant colony. Nexta and Telegram have played key roles in all the revolutions, but violence also plays a key role. The Belarusian revolution failed as it was from the start peaceful and a group decision was not to attack the state buildings. The Maidan revolution was violent and took over many public buildings. The Kyrgyz revolution was also violent, taking over the parliament and president buildings in a week. And that was not the only example. The other factor is how effective the repression has been. In Ukraine’s case the two revolutions had already ousted two presidents and given birth to a real and vibrant civil society; put more plainly, the population was radicalised to the point where they were not only prepared to take to the streets, but to die for their cause. For Poroshenko, repression was no longer an option. The same is true for Vucic: his predecessor Slobodan Milošević lost the Yugoslav presidential election on 24 September 2000. He ended up in The Hague nine months later, after Serbia’s new authorities arrested and handed him over. Everyone else east of Minsk has been a lot more careful about keeping a very tight grip on power. Lukashenko would have been ousted until Putin promised him “everything necessary” to stay in power (aka OMON riot police) when he had his Ceausescu moment during a speech at the MZKT trucks factory. Putin has also been forced down the repression road after the arrest of late opposition figure Alexei Navalny, abandoning his “repression-lite” for the real thing. And once you get into Central Asia the gloves come off completely and they still go for the 96.7% electoral victories from an “adoring electorate”. It seems that Gandi’s non-violence tactics no longer work – until now. That is what is so exciting about the Serbian revolution that just happened – and what is what it should be called: a peaceful uncoordinated revolution that managed to oust an incumbent that has been in power for 14 years. That hasn’t been done before. Sure SL had a lot going for it: the Novi Sad tragedy inflamed emotions; Milošević fate cut Vucic off from using overt repression; social media apps is the means to mobilise and coordinate hundreds of thousands of people; the very leaderless nature of the protest meant the new government has only the vaguest policies which broadens its appeal; and Vucic has been in power over the tipping point of a decade-plus. Is this a new model? Other countries, in the Balkans, Central Asia and the emerging world in general, will be watching closely. This article originally appeared in Editor’s Picks, a free daily email digest of bne IntelliNews’ best stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up for free here. to989.infusionsoft.com/app/f… bneeditor.substack.com/p/ele…