“You will have the opportunity to choose between the past and the future of Serbia. Trust us, we know what we are doing.” And this is not the message of students who represent the future of the country in every way, but of a man who has been in power for 14 years.
This is the message from the Instagram of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, who since 2012, when he came to power, has been dealing with the former government on a daily basis, accusing it of being responsible for the loss of territory, the loss of jobs and the instability of the dinar.
“I ask you to trust your leadership, to believe that we know what we are doing, because we are working carefully. We make all the decisions we make in a rational way, sometimes bravely. And then we go to the elections. In those elections, you will have the opportunity to choose between the Serbia of the future and the Serbia of the past, as we had the opportunity to see from 2000 to 2012. Serbia that lost its territories, Serbia that lost more than 500,000 jobs, Serbia that could not neither pays pensions, nor harmonizes them with what the law prescribed, with the unstable dinar. Or we will go to the future of artificial intelligence, robotics, but, much more important than that,” said Vučić from Instagram to the citizens of Serbia.
Commenting on this message from the President of Serbia, the interlocutors of Danas, as they say, are in a dilemma because they do not know which past Vučić was really referring to. Is it the one in the nineties when the government led the country into wars and bloodshed, the period of hyperinflation when salaries and pensions were either not paid or were worth nothing.
They wonder if he was perhaps referring to the period that resulted in the Kumanovo agreement, or if he had in mind the recent past in which the government, by accepting the Franco-German plan and the Ohrid agreement, allowed the southern Serbian province to “lose territory”. Maybe, they say, he had both the past in mind.
*This kind of statement suits the student movement better
However, as political scientist Zoran Lutovac points out, his statement would be more appropriate for a student movement that is not burdened with legacy and baggage, and certainly not for a man who has already been in power for 14 years.
“When Vučić says “trust us,” it can make sense, because after everything we went through in the 90s and in the last 14 years, he can only refer to the irrational, to belief, as in some sect where religious fanatics call their followers to self-sacrifice,” Lutovac points out.
According to him, no one who does not have a selfish motive of immediate benefit, has not a single reason to support a regime that is steeped in corruption and crime, that completely devastated Serbia, poisoned the water, land and air, sold out natural resources, built roads and buildings just so that it could rob the citizens of Serbia at inflated prices.
“Yes, the citizens will choose between the past and the future, but the past is the parties of this regime and Aleksandar Vučić personally”, notes our interlocutor and adds that it seems that someone planted this statement on Vučić or that he has lost all touch with reality.
*Advanced model is completely sold out
Andrej Ševo, a researcher at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, said in an interview with Danas that no one has any reason to trust Aleksandar Vučić, nor to believe in him.
“Regardless of your ideological position, whether politics towards Kosovo, EU membership, economic development or labor rights are important to you, everything has stopped or is regressing,” says Ševo.
According to his words, the progressive model of development and foreign policy was completely spent at the end of the last decade and looks terribly rude.
“Vučić and the progressives do not have the potential to change for the better and rush into mistakes and embarrassments that the citizens pay for. That is why it is best for Serbia that they leave as soon as possible,” says the researcher of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory.
*Vučić already represents an ugly past
Miloš Jovanović, the leader of the New DSS, is convinced that Vučić’s statement is correct, precisely because in the next elections the choice will be between Vučić and his freakish regime, which already today represents an extremely ugly past of arrogance, theft, betrayal and primitivism in Serbia and the future of the country and nation, which should be orderly, democratic, nationally conscious, ambitious and with restored pride and self-confidence.
“Such a Serbia will not be guided by the saying “where all the Turks are, there is little Mujo”, but will also open a reasoned discussion about the so-called the European path and come to the conclusion that cooperation is more than desirable, but that membership brings more harm than good,” Jovanović points out.
*Serbia needs the opposite of what SNS offers
Jelena Milošević, member of the SSP, believes that the future of Serbia is the opposite of what the SNS offers us.
“Aleksandar Vučić recently declared that he is normal, for example, so I would interpret this latest claim that the SNS is the future of Serbia. And the government of the Serbian Progressive Party destroyed Serbia – distanced us from European integration, brought us back to Šešelje ’90, captured the institutions, stole from us, sold off our property, liquidated our companies, abolished our right to think freely, tried to put a band-aid on journalists’ mouths… It did everything to bring us to the margins of Europe and civilization in general”, states Milošević.
The MP from the Freedom and Justice Party notes that the future of Serbia is freedom, justice, youth, free institutions, professional prosecution, the law on the origin of property, lustration, the European Union… Everything is the opposite of what SNS offers.
“And SNS will go to the dustbin of history and will be remembered as the dark past of our country”, assesses our interlocutor.
*Milanović: A country fused with crime does not last long
Verica Milanović, deputy of the Serbia center SRCE party, believes that every year of the rule of Aleksandar Vučić and SNS took Serbia deeper and deeper into the past, with the systematic collapse of statehood, institutions, financial stability, human freedoms and rights, media freedoms, international reputation, relations with neighboring countries. At the same time strengthening and supporting crime, corruption, violence and divisions in society.
“Trusting Aleksandar Vučić that he knows what he is doing, and that what he is doing will be in the interest of Serbia and the citizens of Serbia is simply not possible, nor is it normal after everything we have seen and experienced in these difficult 14 years. Serbia has experienced and survived everything in its turbulent history, had better and worse statesmen, but history does not remember a statesman whose word means nothing. It may or may not have created an atmosphere of general mistrust but also hopelessness in Serbia,” he believes. Milanović.
She concludes that with the SNS in power, Serbia has no future, because a country fused with crime will not last long.
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