Miloljub Albijanić tells "Vreme" why he stood up against the ruling coalition, who congratulated him and who reprimanded him, as well as whether he expects the progressive government to begin to crumble
The day after the speech in the Serbian Parliament in which he criticized "the government that used a sound cannon on the people", Miloljub Albijanić tells "Vreme" that he has just become an independent deputy in the Serbian Parliament.
"They distanced themselves from me from the party, so I will act accordingly," says Albijanić. "I'm a normal functioning person, I'm not going to fly over others. But, if we can make something that would be good, why not. If I managed to wake people up a little - that's already something."
After the meeting on April 15, at which the Government of Serbia was elected, broke from the clutches of the ruling majority and openly supported the student struggle, Albijanić, he says, received 500-600 messages of support. Not one, he adds, came from the progressives, and none of them patted him even surreptitiously in passing.
"Nobody contacted me from the ruling majority, where are they laughing? But people from Zdrava Serbia did congratulate me on my speech in the Parliament. Today I was at Fefa, the faculty where I teach - the students are naturally delighted with my performance, and everyone who meets me says the same," he describes.
Miloljub Albijanić, deputy of Milan Stamatović's Zdrava Serbia, originally a member of G17 Plus, who until now supported the current government, said in his speech in the Serbian Parliament that Aleksandar Vučić, as prime minister, presented himself as a supporter of the European idea and that he believed him then. He also added that when his party entered the coalition with SNS, it was promised a ministerial post, but nothing came of it after that.
How it all started
If you follow the events that changed Miloljub Albijanić's opinion about the SNS machinery, you can tell almost everything that happened in Serbia in the last few months.
The first time he decided not to follow the path paved by the progressives was in November 2024, when a vote was taken on lithium mining in the Assembly.
"I held the card in the parliamentary unit, but I didn't vote, that's where the first problem arose," he describes.
Soon after, student protests began and he says he immediately sent support to the students at his own faculty. Admittedly, only by email, not publicly, but that can be easily verified.
Then it happened. incident in the Parliament, when smoke bombs were thrown. Albijanić says that even then he said that the students were right, but that few people heard him because there was chaos in the Assembly all day, when the opposition rebelled because the Government of Serbia was passing laws, after its Prime Minister announced that he would resign.
According to the former deputy of Milan Stamatović, he was especially concerned about the state of the country immediately before March 15, when he asked questions to Minister Ivica Dacic - whether he would be able to ensure order and peace on the streets that day.
"And then that incredible event happened with the policeman, when the students blocked RTS, when a colleague hit him, and the authorities accused the students. At the time, I really annoyed the government because I asked - did the MUP determine that a policeman had hit a policeman, because the whole of Serbia saw that video," says Albijanić.
Did he expect a ministerial chair?
However, he broke at the moment when a new government was being formed in Serbia, which was supposed to send a message of reconciliation and opening a dialogue with the rebellious education system, but also with a large number of other people in the country.
"All the time I raised my own temperature, but the government now had an instrument in its hands with which it could show a different face and resolve the issue with the students. They could have said, some ministries are important to us, but here we are going to open the Government for dialogue, and instead we got only a worse Government than the previous one. So when the Minister of Education is a man who is openly against students, what more can be said?"
When asked if he expected him to get a ministerial position, because he mentioned that deal in his speech, he says yes - no, because he has been an accomplished man for a long time.
"Those were our agreements in principle before the coalition in 2023, that we would have a minister, not now", he claims and adds that, as a lecturer, he was shocked that the government cut the salaries of his colleagues at the state faculties. He himself, he says, went on strike at school for four years from 1996 to 2000 and no one took a dinar from him because of it.
Why did he join the coalition?
Two years ago, Albijanić entered into an agreement with the progressives in the pre-election coalition because, he says, he thought he could demonstrate reason and be a man wherever he was.
"But, as the students from Mašinski say nicely - Mechanics against machinery, power is now a machine, it's all about execution. No one asks you anything, no one tells you anything. When we vote in the Assembly, only someone calls us and says it will be that, that, that, don't talk too much about something. It's never been done like that before," adds Albijanić, who was a member of the Assembly for the first time 21 years ago as a member of G17 Plus.
He also gives some examples - that the authorities were shocked that he did not want to vote at the Committee for the Economy for a candidate he had heard about a minute earlier, but for another one who seemed better to him, that they were expected to just look at the main progressive and vote like him.
Will the government be reduced?
First is students were supported by Branko Ružić, a high official of SPS, and now he too.
Albijanić is not sure that the ruling coalition will fall apart quickly because there is iron discipline, and these are individual cases.
"Nevertheless, you see that in the Assembly and the public, only those with extreme views come forward to speak, and that there is no space for normal people to say what they think. This shows that the nervousness is great. Therefore, I think that people have freed themselves, and that the government has ended, it's just that it was not communicated to them."
Who is Miloljub Albijanic?
Born in 1967 in Tometi Polje, municipality of Požega.
In the official biography allegations that he graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics in Belgrade, majoring in Numerical Mathematics, Cybernetics and Optimization and earned the title of Graduate Mathematician, Istinomer reports.
From 1995 to 2003, he taught mathematics at the "Nikola Tesla" School of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade, and from 2003 he was the director of that school. In 2004, he was the deputy director of the Institute for the Improvement of Education. Since 2020, he has been a professor of engineering and advanced mathematics at the College of Electrical Engineering and Computing (Fefa).
As a G17 plus candidate in the 2003 and 2007 parliamentary elections, he was elected as a member of the Serbian Parliament. He was the president of the parliamentary club G17 plus from 2004 to 2006, and the vice president of the Assembly of Serbia in the 2007-2008 convocation.
In September 2006, he was elected as a member of the G17 plus Presidency.
In October 2008, he became the director of the Textbook Institute and held that position until 2013.
Since 2021, he has been the vice-president of "Healthy Serbia", which has been in coalition with SNS since 2023.
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