In the absence of some more important events and meetings, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, made a schedule of consultations with parliamentary groups in order to work on the composition of the future cabinet of the new Government of Serbia. Ten years since he independently formed his first cabinet, if we do not count the two before that headed by SPS president Ivica Dacic, and everything was led by Vučić as the first deputy prime minister. Now he agreed to see with everyone who passed the census - what they think and how they see the future executive power.
Šaip Kamberi, a deputy of the Albanian minority and its representative in the Serbian Parliament, says that this is the fifth consultation he has attended with the Presidency in less than seven years of Vučić's mandate as President of Serbia. In this respect, Serbia is the absolute European leader, and it is difficult to find a similar phenomenon in the world. They had something similar in neighboring Bulgaria in recent years, they had in Israel - but that was caused by the fact that the election results were such that it was difficult or impossible to form a majority that would last for a long time.
PRINCIPAL BUSINESSMAN OF SERBIA
Serbia, since 2012 and the changed way of holding elections, has had no problems with the majority in the parliament. But, anyway, every 18 months there are elections to see who stands. This is the way this regime understands democracy - no one had so many choices, everything was provided and made possible for the opposition, but, well, the people have always, since 2012, given massive support to the list with Vučić on it, and then he attempted to form the Government of Serbia.
Everyone knows that the current consultation process is useless. Because even if there are no dilemmas about the regularity of elections - and because of the need to urgently work on many important projects for Serbia, as the government says every day - the Serbian Progressive Party has an absolute majority, so it is not clear why the Assembly of Serbia has not already been formed. Also the Government, and why it didn't start "implementing projects".
The entire public knows that this did not happen and that an entire system was created in Serbia in order to create the conditions for important decisions to never be made, for the country to be in a state of state, and then, by nature, the only one with legitimacy and authority is Vucic. That's why he decides everything now.
You can see how it looks every day. Let's say, the Ministry of Education passes some Rulebook out of inertia, and then the president from Instagram intervenes and manages policies in the field of education. Or - we don't have a minister of sports, so Vučić has to deal with the financing of sports and the organization of youth sports games. Furthermore - since we don't have a minister of energy, the president has to talk about Rio Tinto as well... Take any area and you will see that all the legitimacy has fallen on the shoulders of the Serbian president and that he has to do everything himself.
Perhaps it is for this reason that Vučić "hurried" the protocol and started consultations regarding the formation of a new government. The majority of citizens do not care for her at all - everyone looks at the president of Serbia. Because twelve years after coming to power, Vučić fulfilled the promise he made during the campaign: that he would create a "one stop shop" for all those who want to come to Serbia and invest. In the meantime, he expanded the scope of responsibility of that "one place". Now literally everything has become work with Vučić - from building a kindergarten in a village and writing history textbooks for primary and secondary schools, to building plans for the metro and Expo 2027.
photo: strahinja aćimović / tanjug...
WHO'S WHO IN THE SERBIAN GOVERNMENT
In a different past, Vučić gave a certain autonomy to the people who worked with him. For example, the adventure with Saša Radulović as Minister of Economy (the last one whose name anyone remembers), Lazar Krstić as Minister of Finance, and Dušan Vujović also as Minister of Finance for a period of four years. Do you remember what is in To the first Vučić Government led by Kori Udovicki, where did Srđan Verbić work, in how many governments was Vanja Udovicič a minister, and what position did Velimir Ilić hold?
In the quiz, "Who is who in the Serbian government", you could also find questions: Which ministry was led by Aleksandar Antic, and which by Goran Knežević? In which positions in the government was Aleksandar Vulin, and in which positions did Bratislav Gašić and in what period? What is the name of the ministry headed by Marko Blagojević, from whom Aleksandar Martinović inherited the Ministry of State Administration?
Overall, a lot of people have changed during this decade. Again, not counting the first two years when Dacic was formally at the table, the real question is who from the current team will play in the spring, once the oath is taken in the Serbian Parliament. About Vučić - this has already been the topic of several analyzes - there are few unspent personnel and unspent people that he could use in the new tournament. He often used people who would be promoted by the media like Pink and Happy as personnel for ministries - for advisory positions or positions of secretaries of state.
His new announcement of the creation of the "Movement for the People and the State" sounds more like a competition for a position in the government that is no longer so attractive to the old guard, which has swallowed more budgets and turned hundreds of tenders. Everyone who collects capillary votes has already been involved in state affairs or affairs with the state, and it is not easy to find new personnel who would bring dynamics to the media representation of the regime.
Namely, over the years, Vučić managed to turn the important post of minister into an "analyst" who works in the TV studio from morning to night repeating the joint text issued by the president's PR service. For that engagement, if they were not from the second rank of associates, they received allowances sufficient to buy a new apartment, get a new big car, send their children to school in England, travel a bit and if you are a man, this is a common occurrence, you get married again. Ministers in the Vučić era are part of the PR strategy and almost never bearers of the policies of the ministries they head. The President of Serbia also has an incredible ability. And that is to calculate the price of each person to whom he will offer a place in the government. It seems that consultations and postponing the formation of the cabinet until the last day serve this purpose - it takes time to make adequate "profiling".
Vucic's consultations resemble what the Paris Saint-Germain football club does every year: they put a big budget on the table and then look at who could help Mbappe in the next season. When a team is formed, it dominates the domestic championship, but is a blank slate in Europe despite the large amount of money invested in the team. So is the Serbian government: dominant within the domestic framework and completely irrelevant outside the borders of Serbia - with only a few points in the elite competition.
TWO PERCENT, FRIENDS
On the other hand, what is the program of the future government, and that government will be a "government of continuity", as Ana Brnabić "likes to say". So, one and the same government, which has been in place since April 27, 2014, was presented on St. John's Day in the Palace of Serbia when the Expo 2027 project and all accompanying activities were discussed. The goals were set, publicly disclosed, it was said how much money will be invested in "those projects" (more than 17 billion euros) and that's it.
We can hardly imagine that in a month or two, when a new Government of Serbia is sworn in, Ana Brnabić or Miloš Vučević (who has been trying to become Prime Minister since 2016) will announce something different or different as a government program. So, we have a company owner, we have strategic goals, we have an accountant (Siniša Mali) - now we need to determine executors for 17 or 27 positions, depending on who else will agree to be part of the "team". During that time, everything works as before, Serbia has an annual budget of approximately 20 billion euros, the public debt is more than 35 billion euros, foreign direct investments are about 4 billion euros, what is the amount of remittances from the diaspora.
During the ten years of Vučić's independent rule, the Serbian economy grew by two percent on average, which is enough for survival and renewal, but, as we ourselves see, we are far and further from the average of the European Union. We even fell further behind Romania, which developed twice as fast in the same period.
photo: jadranka ilić / tanjugWHAT WILL HAPPEN TO US: A. Brnabić and I. Dačić
V.D. COUNTRY
The text has already said that the candidates for minister come from the second echelon and coalition partners. The government will not include the closest collaborators (except Sinisa Mali and maybe Ana Brnabić) such as Andrej Vučić, the Malović brothers, Milan Radoičić, Darko Glišić, Nikola Petrović. Aleksandar Vulin was written off on other grounds, and it will be seen what position is intended for Marko Đurić when he returns to his homeland.
The Socialist Party of Serbia always has the same people it offers: Dačić, Antić, Bajatović (the first among the socialists to call for joining the "new movement"), Slavica Đukić Dejanović, Tončev. There is also a representative of the Krkobabić dynasty from PUPS and a place for Rasim Ljajić's party (perhaps he is also reactivating), other Bosniaks and another minority.
The Assembly of Serbia was formed as it was formed at the beginning of February. Its constitution has not yet been completed, but the deadlines have started to run and Vučić has 90 days to form a new cabinet. So - until the beginning of May. He is currently claiming that this government will lead Serbia for four years, but it seems that he himself does not believe in what he is saying. In parallel with the consultations on the formation of the future government, a decision is awaited after receiving the ODIHR report, which arrived in Belgrade on Monday, and should be published on Wednesday, February 28.
What is written in it can have consequences for the process of forming the government, but also the way in which the crisis in Belgrade will be resolved and the arrival or non-arrival of the international verification mission in the coming weeks and months. All those events that significantly affect the future of Serbia are welcomed by the state in a state of emergency and in the hope that one man will know what and how, and that he will do something that will not further push Serbia out of the civilized world.
The opposition does not participate in the consultations because it does not want to recognize the protocol after what it believes was electoral theft and that the balance of power in the Serbian parliament does not reflect the true electoral will of the citizens of Serbia. Although this does not seem to bother Vučić, it is an additional pressure. Because no matter how much he ignores reality, the representatives of a million voters send him a message that he stole the elections and thereby dramatically threatened the democratic future of Serbia.
What the experience and knowledge of Vučić's way of managing politics in Serbia teaches us is that he will wait as long as he can and that the decision on the mandate and the date of formation of the government in the Serbian Parliament will be part of a wider tactical PR plan that should ensure the stability of his rating on the domestic field, but also in the international arena. He will wait until the last minute, watch what everyone else has to say or do, and try to turn any arguments that are not in his favor upside down with the help of the powerful TV machinery.
Where is the Government of Serbia? Who will govern this country? Will Orlić be the new Minister of Police? Does Vesić stay building roads and railways? It really doesn't seem like the most important thing at the moment.
And it should.
