The chain of responsibility in the mafia pyramid is clear

By basic vocation Master of Agricultural Sciences, Goran Jesic entered politics in 1996, when he founded the Indian organization of the Civic Association of Serbia. He was 22 years old then. After the October 12th changes, he is at the head of this town of Srem for a total of 2006 years. There he achieved great economic and development results, and in XNUMX he became a member Democratic parties.

He was elected Vice President and Secretary for Agriculture, Water Management and Forestry of the Government of Vojvodina in 2012. He resigned from his position in June 2014. From this period, he is known as the man who launched the "Aflatoxin" affair into the public, i.e. the information that the level of this microtoxin in domestic milk extremely high and dangerous to health, which caused political turbulence. Later, he was a member of the DS in the National Assembly of Serbia and one of the party officials who publicly opposed the party's decision to boycott the parliamentary and local elections in 2020.

After the magnificent meeting in Novi Sad on November 5 of this year, where citizens massively expressed their revolt due to the fall of the canopy at the Novi Sad Railway Station, a tragedy that claimed 15 human lives - Ješić is once again in the public eye. He tried to help a young man who was being abused by unidentified persons, who later turned out (at least for one of them) to be police officers. For pushing away the hooded person, he spent twenty days in detention in what he says were inhumane conditions. Ješić's "action" was recorded by the N1 camera.

You have already mentioned in the media the catastrophic conditions in detention units. Some say it's all about a country and its politics, as well as her company, you can find out exactly from the conditions in closed institutions. Is that really so??

Absolutely. The conditions were, to say the least, appalling. When I was detained for the first time, pressure was exerted on the police, from above, of course, not to place me in the recently built detention center within the police station in Novi Sad's Radnička Street, even though there was room there. This is the detention center where Goran Vesić is now. I guess they were afraid that the demonstrators wouldn't come to the station, so they "kicked" me to Beocin, where I spent 48 hours. The experience was terrifying: it was a dark solitary confinement, with no air supply. They deliver inedible food to you for eight hours and no one communicates with you. Extremely depressing and disturbing, especially for people who have not had prison experience.

As for the second detention "cycle", in Klisa, where I spent about fifteen days, I must say that the officers there were correct. But the conditions in the institution are reminiscent of Kandahar or Andrić's "damned courtyard". Actually, I think that Andrić's descriptions of the prison are less scary than what Klisan detention looks like. When I arrived, I was placed in a better room, where the detainees maintained hygiene every day and had certain rules that I also followed. Although I am a smoker, I respected the smoking ban. However, despite maintaining hygiene, we were unable to deal with bed bugs, which are incredibly numerous. People screamed from their bites. By the way, in the rooms that are sized for three people, there are ten detainees each. I am speaking most honestly - I was more afraid of how the students Relja Stanojević and Ivan Bjelic were passing by than for myself. I knew that as students, nice and well-mannered young men, they could not even imagine something like this, not even in their wildest dreams. After all, I went through the army, I was involved in team sports, I have many different life experiences.

Right from the start I decided to accept the situation as it is. I also decided not to think about my daughters, how they are dealing with my arrest, because the thought of them was mentally destroying me. The son was coming to visit. I knew that the government would most like me to go to jail, and that just stimulated me to hold out, as long as it took. I believed, and I still believe, that all that I suffer - I suffer for the sake of the common good. I have never asked them for mercy, just as I do not expect them to ask me for mercy when that moment comes. By the way, this is not the first time I have to deal with progressives.

What exactly do you mean??

When I became passive in politics, I started various private businesses in my profession. Every attempt I made to engage in business was hindered and prevented, and very cruelly. They closed both my and my wife's companies, without any legal basis. They caused problems at every step. Some kind of Risticevics, some kind of veterinary administration, all of course at the behest of Aleksandar Vučić. Admittedly, they haven't put me in a jail cell so far.

Mostly, it is completely justified to call you a political detainee? Of course, not only you but also other arrested activists...

The facts are as follows: there was no legal basis for my detention. The man I "attacked" is just as much a policeman as DJ Vučićević is a journalist. He was masked the whole time. The stretching and mistreatment of little Relja, whom I met only after being released from detention, did not last 15 meters, but several hundred meters. And he was harassed not only by two, but by four unidentified persons who looked like hooligans. All of that was not visible on the N1 video. And those unidentified persons dragged him and abused him just because he took his girlfriend under protection, who was attacked by them. Well, that's what each of us would do! We are not sure if all four were really police officers.

Normal police in a normal country come up, identify themselves, show their badge, calming the people around, and say: we're taking you to such and such a police station, for this and that. You will be entitled to a phone call and so on. And that's only if he's a miscreant, and Relja was not. Therefore, not only did they not look like policemen, but they did not follow any police procedure. The luck of the draw is that my case, when I pushed one of them away, was practically transmitted directly to the N1. Any prosecutor could look at the video and see that the crime I am accused of - simply does not exist. When I was released from custody for the first time, the judge said something like this to the prosecutor: "Colleague, you have no business here! God help you in how you manage this process!”

There is no doubt that it is a political process. The decision to re-detain myself after being released - and you can see it from the plane - is a political one. They just made a mistake. I am a man who got out of politics, and now they have brought me back into politics and that too with a big door. They practically did not give me a choice whether or not I will be involved in politics in the future.

You formally left politics a year ago, when you left the Democratic Party, but not in the earlier period either, past years, you haven't been particularly active. Are the current and previous political persecutions some kind of revenge for the period when you were a high official of the DS, longtime mayor of Indjija, and then vice president of the Government of Vojvodina?

Vučić focuses on several politicians whom he is wary of. I am in that group. I'm not bragging about it, but that's the way things are. It came to me from reliable sources. He repeated it several times in the environment of associates. I have been in politics for a long time, I know him and many people from his environment.

By the way, I left politics because I was disappointed in certain opposition parties, in their moves and election campaigns, which looked worse than the opposition campaigns at the very beginning of the multi-party system. Politics also has a technocratic dimension, some things simply must be known. I didn't want to mess with them anymore, and especially not with the Democratic Party, which went completely to the right or, in a better case, was left without an ideology. I have always been committed to leftist and liberal ideas, and I think that politics without ideology cannot exist. The Serbian Progressive Party is a party without an ideology, and it cannot be defeated by parties without clear worldviews. In populism, you cannot defeat the doctor of populist sciences whom Seselj rocked in his cradle.

And what are your characteristics that make Vučić shy away from you?

I received all the positions under my name and surname, I never hid behind the party or the name of its president during the elections. Then, strong attempts to criminalize me failed. The Tax Administration did a complete forensic of my work while I was the head of Indjija. And they found nothing at all. They wanted to throw me in front of the Special Court for the fight against corruption, and in the end I ended up in front of the Basic Court in Stara Pazova, where they conducted the process against me because, as the mayor, I provided free tickets for the transportation of high school students, as well as because Indjija paid specialist doctors at the Health Center. It all came down to that, and in the end I was freed in the process as well. So they have nothing to blackmail me with. They also know that they can't even bribe me. Of course, various spins and articles in the tabloid media left a certain negative impression on my personal and political rating, they affected my family and friends, but they failed to break me. And I had many "indecent offers" to go to them, which I refused with disgust. Something that would never occur to me.

For example, I have always wondered how Branislav Nedimović, whom I have known for a very long time, looks at himself in the mirror, what he says to his children. Dad changed six games, kids, and that's totally okay! And he did not change the six civic-oriented parties, so for example he switched from the Movement of Free Citizens to the Green-Left Front, instead he made incredible political leaps. I simply cannot understand such people. Vučić cannot offer me anything, so I should shut up and not talk about the fact that his criminal policy is systematically destroying the state and society.

Photo: Duško Medic

Maybe his problem is your unconventional approach to politics. Let's say, your statement after your first release from detention, which became a hit on social networks"Pa, Fuck you motherfucker, fuck you motherfucker! " Many politicians would not say such a thing even in their madness.

It was a way of saying: oh, that's enough! You kill at every turn! You choked 65 people in Obrenovac! You crashed the helicopter! You kill people at toll booths and in the end – this Novi Sad crime! You have created such an atmosphere in society that some child will take a gun and kill his peers! Enough more! I reacted emotionally, it just came out of me. I have these children, I cannot allow them to live in this kind of society. My daughter was at the Novi Sad Railway Station on the day when the tragedy happened, I was shaking until she answered my phone, and her phone was switched off because she was at practice. When she finally called me, I was petrified, almost unable to say a word. So that's enough! You kill, steal, corrupt, live over people, over the media... Enough!

The swear word became a real hit on social networks, it seems that your anger expressed like this is shared by many?

Obviously. My brother and some friends who understand political marketing were appalled when I said that. In the crowd of people who were waiting for me when I left the detention center, I saw my daughter as well. It was all very emotional for me, and then I had the choice to either snap or say that curse word. People have accepted it, because everyone has had enough. What else to say? Vučić insults us every day, not only those who are against his regime, but also his ministers. He lives on us and them, he is a sadist. Man has a need to express his anger in this way as well.

The glass has long since spilled over, and Novi Sad - for which I am proud - has become a kind of Timisoara or Gdańsk of Serbia. The gathering on November 5 was the largest in the history of Novi Sad, and there is no doubt about that. But these other actions that are carried out also show how angry people are and that they no longer want to live in this kind of country. So people employed in public enterprises leave their workplaces to pay their respects to the victims and block the street. The directors can't do anything to them. Novi Sad is back where it belongs. In the end, everything started here with the "yogurt revolution" in 1988, so it's time to end things in it. I must say that the opposition started doing the right things, and it is very important that intellectuals, artists, the university and other public institutions also rebelled. I think the matter has broken. Vučić kept most of society under anesthesia, and now many have woken up. It is important that we persevere in what we are fighting for, that those responsible really answer. I think there will be big problems there.

Some say that the way the government is "spun" tragedy shows that she is only interested in the death of people under the canopy in the context of the impact of the tragedy on the political rating of the president, SNS and its satellites. Do you agree with that??

There is no doubt. They were surprised by 30000 people at the rally, they were scared, that's obvious. It's not about imported people, but angry individuals, very angry. They started spinning just after the tragedy, Ivica Dačić, Goran Vesić, and Vučić. By the way, I believe that Ivica Dacic must also end up in prison. He had to secure the crime scene, and he allowed it to be thoroughly cleaned very quickly. As things stand, the same company that participated in the reconstruction of the station cleaned the place where a thorough construction forensics had to be done. To this day, that place was supposed to be untouched, protected, fenced off, with engineers doing investigations and assessments.

The lie that was immediately thrown out and immediately exposed, that the canopy was not the subject of reconstruction at all and that Comrade Tito is roughly to blame for the tragedy, is shameful. It's a spin worse than when the pilot of the fallen helicopter, Omer Mehić, was declared an alcoholic. They don't even have an "s" of any scruples.

According to some information, criminal proceedings against the responsible leaders and is supervised by extremely loyal people who arrived from Belgrade. They have two goals. - that the court process causes as little damage as possible to the SNS, but also to hide the financial-the corrupt side of the reconstruction of the Railway Station. That's what you meant when you said there would be problems in the court proceedings?

Together, we must insist that construction and financial forensics be done. Twenty-four million euros - that's how much the reconstruction of the station cost. I have been using the Novi Sad Railway Station for decades, since my student days, and I know every corner of it. I can see what was reconstructed on it, they made a glass elevator, that idiotic footbridge that was attached to the canopy and that serves no purpose, and a few other things. All this cannot cost more than a million euros! That has to be looked into.

This regime hesitates and reacts violently when they are "caught up". Remember the "Aflatoxin" affair, which I once discovered. Fewer of them were moved by the fact that it turned out that there are illegal and health-threatening amounts of microtoxins in domestic milk, and more by the fact that it was then discovered that the state's commodity reserves had been stolen. That's when the fiercest campaign against me started. This is precisely why we have to fight for the financial-corruption dimension to be prosecuted in this case. We need to find out where 24 million euros disappeared, not only because it is citizens' money, but also because this obvious theft is the direct cause of the death of 15 people. The financial part of the story will hurt them the most, but we have to insist on it. Of course, the tragedy also starts the story of countless secret contracts that follow large public and infrastructural projects, which are the breeding ground of enormous corruption. The companies that did the reconstruction of the station are more or less the same ones that build, for example, Belgrade on the water or work on EXPO projects.

And corruption kills.?

Yes, because the most sensitive jobs for this government, including construction, are done by non-professionals who bought or forged diplomas. Ordinary criminals have become owners of construction empires that receive lucrative government jobs. Drug dealers and fan groups became contractors and subcontractors. Such people do not think of hiring, for example, 20 top engineers who will pay 3000 euros each. They want to pocket as much money as possible. Unfortunately, what happened in Novi Sad can happen literally anywhere. They can't even set up a behaton, and they want to build nuclear power plants. Just to hire Homer Simpson as a controller.

Do you agree with the statement that the arrest of Goran Vesić and others would not have happened if there had not been a strong revolt of citizens?

Yes. If the government wanted to discover and punish the culprits from the beginning, many of the main actors of the reconstruction should have been detained on the first day, so that they could not influence the witnesses. The chain of responsibility is clear, and it is clear who all should be detained. Of course, I'm not talking about an infinitely long detention, but a limited one, but it had to happen. They kept me, Relja, Bjelic and others in custody so that we would not influence the witnesses, and during that time there were people at large who were potentially guilty of the gruesome death. By the way, if it were not for the citizens' revolt and the actions of the opposition, we would still be in detention, I have no doubts.

How do you interpret the detention of Goran Vesić??

In 12 years, Vučić has not let anyone down the drain, so neither will Vesić. Not because he is loyal to his collaborators, but because the government is structured like a mafia. The first time someone is released and brought before the judicial authorities, the entire organizational structure collapses. Minister Goran Knežević was supposed to be the first to be released, but he just moved to another ministerial position. Gašić was also not rejected, on the contrary, after the "Kneeling" case, he only progressed. If he shows weakness to lose a link due to external pressure, those others will start to hold back, because they will think that they are next. And everyone has something to fear, everyone has tons of butter on their heads. The chain of the mafia pyramid is breaking, and Vučić must not allow that.

I think that at this moment, their plan is that in the end, only some contractors and subcontractors will "suffer", that is, they will be sentenced to prison, and they will also have some satisfaction. Good, VIP places in prisons, and then lucrative government jobs. The goal is to drag out the process, so that the tragedy is forgotten. Vesić is in prison for the simple reason that public opinion polls said that one of the more famous names must be temporarily sacrificed.

You said that the government practically forced you to return to politics...

De facto, they forced me to actively engage in politics again. It's not just about the arrest, but what I've already talked about - they're preventing me from doing my core profession. In addition, all this that has happened has led to the fact that the citizens expect the same from me. I received an incredible number of messages of support, asking me to return to political engagement.

In what way? Well, it's certainly not the Democratic Party or any existing political organization. Together with the people who showed interest in getting involved politically, I came to the conclusion that, in addition to the many existing parties, we need one that will be clearly ideologically profiled, that will be national, and whose headquarters will be in Novi Sad. The first such in the history of the multi-party system in Serbia. But we still have a lot to talk about.

I have no doubt that the creation of a broad popular front is currently needed, that various oppositional ideological options gather votes, free the media and institutions, and create the conditions for free, regular elections. But, on the other hand, I cannot sit and work closely with someone who has completely different, as it were, opposite worldviews from mine. I cannot sit with people who are against the EU. We cannot survive without it, despite all the flaws of that community. I cannot sit with people who discriminate against minority and marginalized groups. Well, those are things of civilization. In order to work together, we must have things on which we unequivocally agree, and how we will profile ourselves ideologically is another matter.

What is the profile of the people who contacted you and on whom you count? Experienced politicians or some so-called. new people?

A good part of them have political experience in serious organizations, they are wonderful people who had the right attitudes and acted correctly all their lives. They became passive for a moment. There are also some people who have not been actively engaged in party work until now. We have to make space for young people, activists and students.

And how will you defeat the mantra promoted by the government? - yes they are "all the same"? And when new people appear on the opposition scene, they get used up very quickly, as if party involvement made them into some kind of monsters. Citizens them, under pressure from propaganda, automatically viewed as dirty, corrupt and evil.

That is an important question. Vučić himself constantly says this: everyone in politics, even his progressives, are "the same". Only he is correct and on the right path. First of all, we have to bring political experts, experienced technocrats back to politics. We must also restore the ideology. If you don't have an ideology, then you base your politics on money and populism. As such, you have no chance against Vučić.

In politics, you have to send clear messages. You don't have to highlight some things in the foreground, but you should answer clearly if someone asks you something. I have been a leftist all my life, I have clear and undisguised attitudes towards the EU, towards the war past, and towards relations with neighboring countries and peoples. I have been saying the same things since the beginning of the nineties until now. And people respected that. Although I expressed some views that were not generally accepted, I won every election in India, under my own name. The citizens judged that I do my job well.

If I were Rela, I would pack up and leave the country

You talked about the terrible conditions in detention. Student Relja Stanojević did it, at least it seems from his public appearances, endured with difficulty. You defended him from unidentified persons 5. November, but you only met him after he was released from custody. How did it affect you??

His case is particularly absurd. They prosecute him because they beat him, abused him and stretched him. Relja and other young people who have been arrested and detained without any guilt will have a hard time dealing with this experience. They did not deserve to go through the ordeal of detention. It is not a place for our children, for our best children. If I were Rela, I would pack up and leave the country.

It should be said, however, that in addition to innocent people, they also put some of their hooligans who were banging the City Hall into custody. You will be "compensated" upon release from custody. They will get som euros each and some allowance to work, as they say in their language. They were detained so that they could show us all together as thugs, since they have these on videotapes going wild. That's how I and Relja and others became hooligans. By the way, according to my knowledge, there are also some other innocent people in custody, political detainees, who do not have adequate legal protection and receive questionable treatment, and about whom the public does not know. Political and non-governmental organizations should help them.