do you think, if there was real oppression people could even vote democratically and change their government?<p>I think you don't know what is oppression then.<p>(not downplaying how bad Vucic had been to Serbia, but the fact that people replaced him without violence and democratically means something still was in place)
There are certainly different levels of oppression and autocracy.<p>Here it was designed and made to look like a democracy, but it really required a 70% turnout and 50%+ of people voting against the ruling party for them to accept defeat, especially as there are still large vote thefts going on (to the order of 5-10% of the entire voting population). Basically, anything less than 50% would have put the country in turmoil and violence — again.<p>As a tidbit, we've got 6.4M registered voters (18+) in a country of 6.5M people. There are a few explanations about how that works, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
> do you think, if there was real oppression people could even vote democratically and change their government?<p>Sorry, they get no bonus point for accepting the elections’ results. It’s the bare minimum if they want to pretend to be in a democracy. It does not make them any less oppressive. See also Orban and the PiS.<p>Now they have some time in the opposition to build something credible to get back into power if they really want it.
"not downplaying how bad Vucic had been to Serbia".<p>But you are, though.
Oppression is not binary. And modern forms make it extremely difficult to hold the oppressive governments accountable.
There's a spectrum between the Netherlands and North Korea.
That is not a good analysis. Both North Korea and
Russia claim to be democratic countries - see
the name "Democratic People's Republic of Korea".
Would you also say for example, that there was no suppression in the GDR?
What is the point of this "no true Scotsman" comment, exactly? To defend Vucic? Or to say that what the people managed to do wasn't very hard because they managed to do it?
If you question was honest, most likely - a dislike for semantic bleaching.<p>Also, some (not me), have survived regimes like Tito, Assad or Saddam, they definitely would have different perspective on word oppression.<p>(A thing to get us on the same ground, lets call him extremely corrupt, very few will dispute that)