Guests at the holiday of democracy

photos: jadranka ilić / tanjug

Democracy does not exist by itself. It depends on the people who build it and believe in it. Elections should be a celebration of democracy. Not only for the voters and the country in which they take place, but also for all those who pretend to say that they care about democracy in a country - the European Union and its member countries, the United States of America, other international organizations.

As for every holiday, guests come to the house. There are those who came because they really love that family, they look forward to its prosperity, they want to help if they can. There are those who don't really care about anything, but they come because there is free food, they come to drink, eat, have fun. It doesn't matter to those people if the host is a bully in the house, if there are victims of violence in that house, if they won't have anything to eat from tomorrow because they spent all their money on the holiday itself.

THAT'S OUR JOB

IGOR GEDIĆ, JURIJ FJODOROV, SHARIF HAKIM ZOD

This was also the case during our recently concluded democracy holiday. The international community has shown that it is not a homogeneous group of people who all believe in democracy. Under the slogan "That's our job", many people took pictures with the president and ministers, attended conferences, opened an interest section - not caring if they were destroying the basic right of people to make an informed choice when voting. They put their support and praises for the government of Serbia on their accounts on social networks, boasted about successful talks with ministers, ignoring the fact that they are party figures who are campaigning, and not elected representatives of the people of this country and state leaders. They did not understand the basic principles of democracy and confused their work with clerical duties, bureaucratic procedures and ill-defined goals such as stabilocracy.

Let's start with the obvious. After the "ProGlas" initiative scheduled an event in Niš a day earlier, the arrival of President Aleksandar Vučić in Niš was announced, along with Jofre and the presidents of Bulgaria and Azerbaijan to open the newly built gas intersection. On that day, December 9, I wrote an open letter to the head of the EU Delegation in Serbia, Emanuel Joffre, on behalf of Civic Initiatives, and asked him not to participate in the election campaign. Nevertheless, he participated in an event that was not only part of the pre-election campaign, but was also used in a very perfidious way to limit the freedom of movement and assembly in Nis, when the streets around the place where ProGlas was gathering were closed to both pedestrians and vehicles. . Those streets were not on the route of the presidential visit.

Tanjug conveyed Jofre's statement: "Today, Serbia is diversifying its energy sources, Serbia is becoming more resilient, and this is an indicator of its strategic orientation and commitment to European integration."

What was heard was ideal for the needs of the campaign: the current government is committed to Europe. Anyone who follows political events in Serbia knows that this is not true, but when the uninformed hear this in the election campaign from EU representatives - that information directly affects their choice on voting day.

THANKS TO THE SERBIAN PEOPLE AND DACIC

KATJA ANDRUS, FARAH KARIMI, REINHOLD LOPATKA

As for the social networks of foreign embassies that promoted the government, which, to repeat again, is not the government but the party that is currently fighting for power, the campaign was quite successful. I estimate that their reasons were precisely stabilocracy and an attempt to curry favor with the SNS, which they estimated would remain in power. I'll give just a few examples: on November 17, the US embassy posted a video on Twitter, and later Ambassador Hill retweeted it, promoting economic cooperation between the US and Serbia. In it, Diane Farrell, with the long position of US Deputy Undersecretary for International Cooperation, says that she had "excellent meetings with both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Energy" and that there are many reasons "to feel positive about US-Serbian cooperation". Not only is authoritarian government supported in this way during the election campaign, but the democratic public is also showing resistance to cooperation with the USA, which will have long-term consequences for democratic values.

On December 6, less than two weeks after the election, the American Embassy posted a picture of Ambassador Hill with Ivica Dacic with the words "Thank you to the Serbian people for the kind words that Minister Dacic conveyed about the vision and wisdom of Henry Kissinger." What I can say with certainty is that the Serbian people did not ask one of the contestants in the election, in the middle of the election, to convey nice words about Kissinger or anything else to anyone.

In addition, Vladimir Bilčik's statement after the election day, in which he says that the elections went smoothly, shows the habit of the European bureaucracy to remain attached to the stabilocracy. From the role of the European Parliament's rapporteur for Serbia, Bilčik once again turned a blind eye to all the irregularities and showed an undisguised desire for the current parties to remain in power. He ended by saying: "So, overall, I think the elections went smoothly." That's why I want to congratulate the citizens of Serbia for voting in greater numbers than last year."

THE TRUTH INSTEAD OF NICE WORDS

There are more examples of the participation of the international community in the campaign of parties in power, but it is important to cover the guests who wish well for democracy and this country. For the first time, although the situation was the same in at least five previous election processes, this time we have international observers who decided to clearly and unequivocally point out the seriousness of electoral irregularities in this country.

International observers, of whom there were more than three hundred during these elections, gave an independent and very clear assessment of election irregularities, including the pre-election atmosphere. Their press conference included information about the pressures on voters, the unequal status created by the president's involvement in the electoral process and the inadmissibility of this in a democratic country, media coverage of ninety percent of the parties in power, inserting copied ballots into ballot boxes with an official seal, buying votes , the abuse of public resources, the blurred line between the state and the party, and so on. Also, they showed great concern "due to frequent and premature elections that prevent democratic institutions from functioning properly and producing results".

Stefan Šenach, head of the observation delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said that "they understand the demonstrations because it was clearly stated that these elections were not fair, they were not fair and this is a problem for a country that wants to follow a democratic path." He laughed when he heard Vladimir Bilčik's statement and added: "We had a statement from the OSCE, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, and it was a very negative report. And I don't know what this expert said - partnership and democracy do not lie on nice words, but on the truth".

So, again, democracy does not exist by itself. For the first time in the last ten years, we got international observers who decided to clearly and loudly point out the collapsed democracy to which this authoritarian government condemned us all. For the first time, we have the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany, which announced the day after the election: "Serbia voted, but the OSCE reports on abuse of public resources, intimidation of voters and cases of vote buying." This is unacceptable for a country that has the status of a candidate for the EU".

The European Commission also spoke, but I would say more in Bilčik's tone than the tone of domestic and international observers. They demanded that the recommendations of the observers for the next elections be implemented and that "competent authorities are expected to transparently provide credible reports on allegations of election irregularities." Translated, they are asking those who revoked the citizens' right to vote to write a report and change the situation before the next election. This government has had all these recommendations on paper for a long time, it has not changed anything, nor will it, at least in practice. We don't need anything else here, but for people like Stefan Šenach to work in the European Commission. The principle of stabilocracy has no place in the European Union.

STABILOCRACY AS AN ENEMY OF DEMOCRACY

The authoritarian tendencies of a stabilocracy will be far more destructive in the long run than all other authoritarian systems. It is a system that favors the party in power regardless of the electoral will of the citizens, and is maintained externally by international actors. Stabilocracy is the basic enemy of free citizens, and thus of democracy. The international community must prevent the development of stabilocracy, and not expect it to produce results and fight against it only when it sees that there are no results, as they saw in the case of Banjska.