"An important step towards normalization"; Professor Petrov: This situation will end very soon

Professor Petrov analyzed in detail the moves that preceded and will follow these talks:

"It is obvious that we are talking about the operationalization of the so-called fourth demand of the students, which cannot be realized without making changes to the Law on Higher Education. So, at this moment, I cannot say anything more because I am not familiar with something that only became known to the public a few days ago. And that is that, as far as we understood from the last announcement of the Rector's Office, during these blockades, apparently someone at the University, probably in some other locations, worked on drafting law on higher education on which the University insists," he told "Hello".

According to Professor Petrov, he expects concrete results from the dialogue.

"It is important that all competent authorities, universities on the one hand and competent authorities of the Ministry of Finance and Education, on the other hand, show a lot of responsibility at this moment. It seems to me that this could be the first step towards the institutional normalization of the situation," says Petrov.

He points out that the road to normalization started a few weeks ago:

"That may not be noticed so much at first glance because we still talk a lot about those student protests. How massive are they, what are their real and what are their hidden goals, are there parties, some other political organizations behind them... But the bottom line is that, if nothing else, in the last two, three weeks, we have a normalization in terms of safety at those gatherings, thank God there are no new incidents, no serious injuries. The last one was in Novi Sad, where a protest participant himself rode a motorcycle fell because of the cable set up by those protest organizers, seriously injured. And we hope that this will not happen, and that the institutions, to use that expression, will start to do their work and do it in a responsible way."

Petrov points out that this is exactly the main message and the main request of the students.

"I saw the message of my students first of all as a message to increase awareness and to realize more of that individual responsibility of people. We can say that it is primarily the responsibility of the government, which is of course true, but it is also the responsibility of the political opposition. It is the responsibility of all those who are in positions of responsibility, including professors," emphasizes Petrov.

He concluded that this whole "situation" will end very quickly, and that the benefit will be that the level of political, legal and democratic culture in Serbia has been raised.