For 14 weeks, opposition protests have been held against the presidency of Aleksandar Vucic while politicians mostly stayed in the background.
That changed over the weekend when radical right-wing leader Bosko Obradovic led a charge of several dozen people into the headquarters of national state broadcaster (RTS), prompting many to ask whether the demonstrations demanding that Vucic ease his tight control over state media and hold fair elections are being hijacked by politicians.
Obradovic’s Dveri is one of more than 20 parties from across the political spectrum that formed an alliance to back the protests, which were triggered when a gang of thugs beat up opposition politician Borko Stefanovic in November.
That incident followed many months of critics accusing Vucic of smothering unsympathetic media and curbing democratic freedoms, accusations that Vucic has dismissed.
The movement has since adopted the slogan "one of 5 million," in a jab at Vucic, who said after the early rallies that he would not bow to a single demand by protesters "even if there were 5 million of you."
"Most protesters appear to be participating not because of one or the other party or leader, but rather despite them," Florian Bieber, a professor of Southeast European studies at the University of Graz in Austria, told RFE/RL on March 18.
"This is a big worry.... Obdradovic has been using the protests to get more visibility than his party has support. This weekend presents a serious problem, as his role is not only a challenge to the more peaceful protests, but also his message shifts attention from democracy to nationalism."
Populist Wave
Dveri has ridden a populist wave sweeping much of Europe, pushing anti-European Union, anti-lesbian-bisexual-gay-transgender (LGBT) positions, as well as calling for a reexamination of the role of Nazi collaborators during World War II.
In 2016, the party gained entrance to parliament after pairing with the conservative Democratic Party of Serbia to gain 5.02 percent of the vote, just over the threshold for representation in the legislature.
Until the March 16 storming of RTS, the first time state television’s building had been broken into since an October 2000 uprising that eventually led to the ouster of former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Vucic had largely ignored the protests.
But Obradovic's move, accompanied by former Belgrade Mayor Dragan Djilas and one supporter who inexplicably was carrying a chainsaw, appears to have emboldened Vucic, a former ultranationalist and onetime member of Milosevic's cabinet.
"Serbia will not allow threats of violence by anyone. Anyone who thinks that they can get political results by hooliganism, violence, attacks on people, physical attacks on people, they are mistaken," Vucic said at a press conference on March 17, the day after the RTS invasion.
"I don't want to talk to fascist leaders like Bosko Obradovic. I don't want to talk. As you can see, I don't even want to talk now when my life is in danger, because I don't care and I am not afraid at all," he added.
As Vucic spoke, skirmishes with riot police were reported outside of the presidential building, with police firing tear gas against demonstrators who vowed to form a human chain around the building to prevent him from leaving.
The move by police capped the first weekend in more than three months of protests where authorities used force against demonstrators.
The rise of someone like Obradovic in the demonstrations highlights the weakness of leadership and lack of a coherent program among established parties, according to Vuk Vuksanovic, a Balkan political analyst from Belgrade.
"The shift in these two days was about the coalition trying to take over the protests that have been ongoing for the past three months, but which were civic in nature, and make them more political and reenergize the protests as they were fading," he said.
"Their main goal at this moment in time is to stay afloat so that they may have a shot at Vucic in the future.... As a coalition, they are too weak."
