Beset by weeks of protests by college students over a lethal practice station catastrophe final month, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic acted on Wednesday to defuse the unrest by pledging to fulfill all their calls for.
The concrete awning of the just lately renovated roof of the railway station within the northern metropolis of Novi Unhappy caved in on Nov. 1, killing 14 folks and injuring three. A kind of damage later died of their accidents.
Following the catastrophe, opposition events, college students and the general public took to the streets, blaming the accident on authorities corruption, negligence and nepotism that resulted in shoddy building.
The ruling coalition and Vucic denied the fees and mentioned all these chargeable for the catastrophe should be held to account.
College students’ calls for included publication of all paperwork associated to reconstruction of the station and launch of arrested protesters.
Vucic has confronted different anti-government rallies since he first got here to energy as deputy prime minister in 2012, however that is the primary time he has bowed to protesters’ calls for.
“Every part we have now and what the prosecutor’s workplace has … can be made obtainable to the general public tomorrow,” Vucic informed a press convention.
He mentioned these arrested throughout protests had been launched, and pledged to pardon all who could possibly be convicted at subsequent trials.
Whereas Vucic spoke, a whole bunch of scholars who gathered in entrance of his workplace within the metropolis centre jeered and demanded his resignation.
“For these individuals who hear this noise, it is the noise of someplace round 600 of them … I respect and recognize them immensely,” Vucic mentioned in a reside TV broadcast.
Irina Sekulic, a scholar activist, mentioned every day protests would proceed till authorities apprehend individuals who usually clashed with college students on the rallies.
“We is not going to again down,” she mentioned.
Savo Manojlovic, chief of the Kreni-Promeni (Transfer-Change) opposition motion, criticised Vucic’s dealing with of authorized paperwork associated to the catastrophe.
“What a shame, (that) the documentation … shouldn’t be with prosecutors however with the President. That is the collapse of the state,” Manojlovic posted on the X social community.
This text was produced by Reuters information company. It has not been edited by International South World.
