IF THE Czech revolution was "velvet" the Serbian equivalent now in progress is noisier but a great deal more fun. The "humorous revolution" has, so far, seen a bombing attack on the state controlled TV station in Belgrade by paper aircraft of the fictitious "Serbian Air Force", protesters holding their noses as they march past the "Stinking Parliament" and students building a "Belgrade Wall" in contrast to the one which was torn down in Berlin.
This revolution is great fun and yesterday it claimed its first victim, the Information Minister, Mr Aleksander Tijanic, whose resignation statement was almost as comical as some of the protests.
Mr Tijanic, as tens of thousands of demonstrators prepared for their 19th nightly march, announced that his departure from government had nothing to do with the current crisis. He had, he said with a straight face, resigned three weeks ago but was only announcing it now.
But Mr Tijanic is not a credible figure. He oversees the comic series of lies and half truths which has characterised that section of the media under his control. In yesterday's edition of the pro regime newspaper Politika a demonstration of 150,000 people was covered in a short article in the bottom left hand corner of page 15.
The front page was devoted to matters of more serious concern. The President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, made a rare public appearance in a photograph with his Montenegrin counterpart, Mr Momir Bulatovic, under the headline "new roads will be built in spring". Also prominently featured were the visit of Foreign Minister Milan Milutinovic to London and a follow up article on the bomb in the Port Royal station in Paris.
Ostensibly the protests have been caused by the annulment of last month's regional elections which Mr Milosevic's supporters lost, but they have quickly developed into a battle for free speech and a free media.
It is no accident that the main targets of the demonstrators have been the offices of Politika and the First Channel of state television. It has been no accident either that the response to the demonstrations has been the closing of the capital's only independent radio station B-92.
Essentially a music station B-92 was back on the air yesterday and in good humorous form too. Its director, Sasha Mirkovic, was delighted as he spoke about the closure and the re opening of B-92.
It had been closed by official edict and had been reinstated following an international storm of protest. But the authorities, as unintentionally humorous as its opponents are, gave a different version.
Only two days ago the state transmitter which B-92 rents was shut down following a rather nasty letter from the Ministry of Transport and Communications which included phrases such as "the broadcasting of your station without a licence is illegal". Then after international and domestic condemnation, Mr Mirkovic received another letter in a different tone from Mr Dragoljub Milanovic of the national broadcasting service.
"Due to heavy rain," the letter said, "the penetration of water, by damaging a coaxial cable, created some sort of interference with the transmitter and the antenna system. This caused an automatic switch off of the transmitter."
Mr Mirkovic found the climb down laughable and so did the tens of thousands who daily march and protest in the centre of Belgrade. Militsa, a professor of English in the university, was laughing too at the day's edition of Politika which showed Mr Milosevic sitting on a sofa with Mr Bulatovic. "We have seen that sofa so many times, it is the best known object in Serbia.
"Milosevic is never seen in public. We only see him in photographs and he is always pictured receiving some dignitary on the State Sofa."
The workers want to see Mr Milosevic in the flesh. Not many had turned out in the protest march until yesterday but now the trade union Independence which has 60,000 members and is growing daily has joined the students in the protest marches. Its leader Mr Branislav Catar has called a general strike for next week and many of its rank and file members were on the streets.
Dragan Zafirovic and his colleagues in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs have been laid their monthly salary of £60 on a regular basis but the government is looking for 7,000 redundancies. "We are angry but only a minority have joined the demonstrations. Most of my colleagues are afraid they might be identified and lose their jobs."
Everyone I spoke to, as well as demanding the reinstatement of the election results, made what they considered to be an important point which people in the West should understand. They were not, they said, protesting in favour of the Zajedno (Together) Coalition which had won control of most cities and towns. They were protesting instead in favour of justice and democracy.
From the rostrum near the university buildings the country's most famous cinema and theatre director Dejan Mijac addressed the swelling crowd: "We wait for the dawn which will come when the government sleeps. They are comfortable now in their slumber but they won't enjoy what we will enjoy which the reveille is sounded."
Then President Milosevic made one of his rare appearances and for the second night running too. Each faculty of the university had made its contribution. Physics students had posters proclaiming: "We have the mass and the velocity to succeed", the language students produced posters in different languages for the benefit of the foreign TV crews but the art students stole the show with their magnificent effigy of the President in blue and white striped prison garb and bearing the prison number 17111996. The regional elections were annulled on November 17th.
