AS Serbia's democratic leaders, joined by France's former culture minister, Mr Jack Lang, excoriated President Slobodan Milosevic, they were watched in "Belgrade's Republic Square by a silent representative of what is known here as "The Regime".
Last night's demonstration was relatively small - just 50,000 people turned out - but the good humour remained despite the Supreme Court's refusal to reinstate the municipal election results. There was room to move around for a change, but every move was being watched.
On top of a tall concrete flagpole a camera rotated, focused, rotated and focused again. It bore no stickers proclaiming its ownership and to the crowd was a faceless symbol of the way things are done by Yugoslavia's elected dictator.
This correspondent has been in demonstrations, from Russia to South Africa, some of them violent, but nothing, not the Zulu warriors with their traditional weapons, not the tanks at the Moscow parliament, produced the same feeling of menace as this silent witness did.
The video cassette will provide compulsive viewing at the headquarters of Drzavna Bezbednost, as the former UDBA secret police is now known. It will show slogans which describe the president in terms so bereft of endearment that even the most sanitised translation could not be reproduced on these pages.
The video will tell "The Regime" that the people of Belgrade are its sworn enemies and it will show the faces of the students, the family groups, the trade union members which held no trace of fear.
The people, particularly the young, have sounded the death knell of the Milosevic administration. The decision to annul the elections was a catastrophic error of judgment on Mr Milosevic's part; the decision of the Supreme Court which he controls not to reinstate the results has compounded the issue.
But there were some worrying signs concerning those who wish to replace the Serbian president. The old Serbian anthem, Bozqa Praida, in which God is called to the nation's aid, greeted by the three fingered salute of the Orthodox blessing, was a reminder of a state in which ethnic cleansing has produced a completely homogeneous society.
The speech of Mr Zoran Djindjic, the leader of the Democratic Party, is unlikely to have reassured the representatives of the western embassies who attended. He welcomed Bosnian Serbs present at the demonstration and said: "We will bring them respectability again. They will join us in victory."
Mr Djindjic has previously been a supporter of the former Bosnian Serb leader, Dr Radovan Karadzic, but in more recent times has watered down his commitment saying he had done so to prevent Mr Milosevic from taking control of the Serbs in Bosnia.
The leader of the Setian Renewal Movement, Mr Vuk Draskovic, on the other hand spoke in English and emphasised his support for the Dayton accord which has brought, if not peace, a sustained ceasefire in Bosnia. He made a striking comparison between Mr Milosevic and Mr Nicolae Ceausescu, the former leader of neighbouring Romania.
The people, he said, had two choices. They could march and demonstrate until they forced Mr Milosevic's resignation or they could accept defeat and be prepared to be slaves. Mr Milosevic, he said, was trying to provoke violence and bloodshed, even a civil war but the people would continue to demonstrate peacefully.
Sadly however, the wonderful effigy of Mr Milosevic in prison garb, the highlight of recent protests, was missing last night. Its owner Mr Dejan Bulatovic (21), was in prison on charges of breaching the peace. Democratic lawyers say he has been ill treated, and at a press conference yesterday afternoon they read a letter from his mother who visited him in prison yesterday. Her son, she said, was lying naked on the concrete floor of his cell, his nose broken and the muzzle of a gun repeatedly placed in his mouth.
