It could be even worse

The day of the interview with the associate professor of the Faculty of Political Sciences, Dr. Đorđe Pavićević, was marked by two pieces of news - one was that the students and the rector of the University of Belgrade are getting closer to an agreement and ending the blockade of the Rectorate. Let us remind you that the students blocked the Rector's office on September 13, among other things, because of the unresolved case of plagiarism by the Minister of Finance, Sinisa Malog.

The second, more spectacular news was that the Government of Serbia issued a conclusion in which it indicated to ministers, state secretaries, directors of public companies and institutions - in general, all state officials - that they must not violate Article 29 of the Law on the Anti-corruption Agency from the announcement to the end of the elections, as well as that they must not abuse public resources in the campaign.

The next day, on the day when this interview went to press, the news was announced that the students reached an agreement with Rector Ivanka Popović, that the Rectorate was unblocked, and that, as Rector Popović said, "the questionability of the doctorate and the slowness of solving the validity of the doctorate of the Minister of Finance Sinisa Malog damages the reputation of the University" and that "it is in the interest of all members of the academic community that this issue be resolved as soon as possible".

The president also called from New York, setting the stage for probable attacks on the rector in the coming days, saying that the Rectorate has become a "party shack", that Đilas, Sergej Trifunović and Obradović are entering it, that they are all students, and that he, Vučić, "supports the love of the rector and them".

Question for Prof. Pavićević was there - what would be a compromise solution, if the students' request was for the rector to appear on RTS and recommend the prime minister to replace the finance minister?

ĐORĐE PAVIĆEVIĆ: It is certainly too difficult a request, especially that part about appearing on RTS, but the fact is that the students really have the right, since there is a classic conflict of interest - you have the competent minister of finance, who needs to be decided, and he decides on the financing of your institution. The request for removal could be part of the compromise that they announce on both sides, given that two things have been achieved - that the procedure will indeed be accelerated, and there are indications that it will be so, and that the University has admitted that those who were entering the University building to obstruct the blockade were in fact members of the ruling party.

"WEATHER": Did that surprise you?, what the rector said?

I wouldn't say that I was surprised - I would be surprised by this release on RTS. I was much more surprised by the first announcement of the rector's collegium, actually both the first and the second. First, it completely resembled those announcements from the nineties, when students protested, and they were condemned for abuses and said that students should not engage in politics. It's a discourse that totally resembled the nineties and that standard authoritarian model that says "only we can do politics, no one else can." The second announcement was the one in which they equated the students and those who entered the Rectorate at the invitation of the party to obstruct - they said that they were two opposing political parties. I thought the university didn't respond that way anymore.

Where did this change in the attitude of the Rectorate come from??

There are a significant number of people at the University who agree with what the students are saying. Those people, for one reason or another, are silent or will not give them open support. Many of the colleagues I spoke with are bothered by the very request you mentioned, otherwise, they agree with the students in everything else.

What do you think?, how will this end? Not this in the Rectorate, but whole "the case of Sinisa Mali" which was the reason for the blockade.

It's hard to say. You cannot take away the doctorate from him, because it was not even given, it was not formally a promotion of Sinisa Mali as a doctor. He can be found guilty of plagiarism and not be awarded a doctorate, I guess that will have to be the outcome of the whole story in the end, because the stakes are very high, it is about the reputation of the entire University both externally and internally. You will have a lot of student resistance, but also a lot of professor resistance if that doesn't happen.

If it were to be officially said that Sinisa Mali's doctorate is plagiarism, would it have any consequences, apart from these academic ones, tj. never to be awarded a doctorate? I mean political, criminal consequences.

It is a completely unregulated area. It could be criminal, if those from whom he copied filed a complaint. But, there is no such thing as falsification of a document, in that respect it is not regulated in such a way, so far we do not have any practice in this regard. This is something that remains to be regulated. It was only the year before last that we got that regulation, they call it the "regulation on plagiarism" for short. Such occurrences were not regulated because it was assumed that they would not be massive, that the mentors would not sign such reports.

When it comes to political responsibility, you have a very unusual understanding of the political responsibility of our president, who says that someone will not be on the list or will not be a minister, but only if he does not fulfill what he thinks he should fulfill, and this is how he can be a minister and if he cheated. It is not only Siniša Mali, there is the governor and the minister of police. Along with the Minister of Finance, these are the people who cheated the system. In fact, they are at the top - add a few more ministries and they are the most important ministries in any government. What counts is the effect it will have on the elections. That is all that interests the SNS as a party, or its president, and that you, in fact, have no responsibility towards the institutions or society.

Of course, in any even remotely normal country that adheres to certain standards, none of them could be a minister. And not only that - he should not hold any other responsible public office. But the consequence of all that is that you have a complete devaluation of everything and the collapse of the university. When the president says that someone with a primary school education can be a minister, and that it is his responsibility for electing him, or the responsibility of the prime minister, that means that simply the knowledge validation system, i.e. diplomas, have nothing to do with anything else . You wanted degrees first to get legitimacy, and when people found out that your degrees are invalid, you say - well, degrees don't matter. If they are not important, then why did so many people in the party - if you look at the period from 2009, 2010, until today - receive such diplomas, do various masters, doctorates at universities where it can be completed very easily, or, completed without you don't have any obligations?

Why does anyone need a Ph.D?

It's a mystery to me. What do you need that paper for? It's probably needed for some kind of extra credential for what you do. As a party, you prepare people for different fields, so you say, look, this guy has a doctorate in that field, he can deal with it. But that is not necessary at all, and now they are telling us that it is not important. If a person has a career, if he has a CV and if that CV confirms his competences, then those diplomas mean nothing to you. Siniša Mali has a CV, but I am afraid that it is a CV for something else, that is, that it is more for some other services that should deal with it. But I think we've had a lot of cases of people - Bečić, for example - who have absolutely nothing behind them, who fill a hole with it.

You participated in some of the talks between the government and the opposition at FPN. What it looks like from the inside, is there a dialogue or does it look like the Assembly?

The difference between the first and the last meeting is important. The former at times resembled the Assembly, but that was while the SZS was still participating. Later, the moderators took on a bigger role, much more important than the participants. The mood of the representatives of the ruling party also changed, they came to the last meeting with that paper, which, in fact, should meet what was discussed. Another thing is how the talks were set up, whether it is enough or not, but what CRTA, CESID and Transparency presented, they almost all accepted, at least formally.

It seems to me that institutions are collapsing even more with this way of working. They position themselves as if they will guarantee that they will obey the law. And some parts of some laws that correspond to them now - they say, we will respect this.

It is a problem of another kind, it is a problem of what is set within the conversation itself, what can be discussed. It was immediately refused to discuss changes to the law, because it is both late and a job for the Assembly. On the other hand, some types of things could have been done, such as the appointment of REM Council members

which are missing. How do we know who they will choose and what it will change? It could be even worse. It does not guarantee anything. The big problem here is that, in my opinion, any change in regulation could not guarantee anything.

Why??

You still have the judiciary that you have now. Can anyone honestly believe that the Anti-Corruption Agency will punish Vučić if he violates any of those rules? Or, that the punishment will be such that it will harm him. Maybe sometimes, symbolically, as they are doing now. Or, that REM will actually establish control over the media and demand that they do what they were given the frequency to do. When you have institutions defined like this, you cannot trust that they will react appropriately, including the judiciary. It takes a little more than that. How to get there is another matter. Probably the key thing that can be done, and that everything can be done within the law, is for RTS to change its editorial policy. That can be done tomorrow.

Why stop there?? Ok, maybe that will happen, but then you still have 4 out of 5 national televisions where it's scattered. That's what REM should do.

I find it hard to believe that REM will do that, and I also believe that one phone call can fix it. Let's see if someone from SNS will be a guest with Đilas or Jeremic tomorrow on Pink or some other television. Well, if we see it, then, come on, I'll believe it can.

Why are these conversations taking place at all?? Evo, now McAllister will come too, so he says, same as Maja Gojković, that there will be discussions before and after the elections... Why? With what purpose?

There are two things that are very problematic here. One is that there is a political but also any other social conflict that is constantly deepening. It is something that goes deeper and deeper, and the possible consequence of that is the potential conflict or repression that can arise from it, as well as crises that can then have different outcomes. Now, foreign actors probably care much more that a crisis does not occur, that it functions as peacefully as possible, and whether there will be democracy in the full sense of the word is not important. The people inside should also care to create a society where you can communicate. What is known, that is, it is not something that has not been investigated, is that where there are deep conflicts, those face-to-face conversations give good results, in terms of reducing tensions, changing the image of the other.

Forwards, here is a larger group, probably the biggest in the opposition, she left after two dates. Opet, therefore, there is no such dialogue.

There isn't, and probably won't be for a while.

Is it possible to have a dialogue with someone who uses the media in this way?

You know what, people organized conversations with the killers and the families of the victims and they had some kind of effect. It is important that all of this does not end with some kind of reconciliation, but that it receives some kind of institutional resolution, including the one concerning criminal responsibility, as well as responsibility for all that would be the consequence of those forms of actions. Honestly, when you say "we're going to chase each other down the street", well, I don't know who would actually get killed in this situation. That effect of the stronger chasing the weaker is quite bad. What is important is whether you can transfer the effects of such conversations to the institutions.

How to liberate a captured state, by which we were declared by the European Commission?

It will be very difficult. What the government had as an ambition, and what it has now largely realized, is a change in the social structure - that is, that they have a part of private property that they control, or someone close to them, and that they have many non-state levers that they control. What is interesting is that here the situation is slightly reversed from the classic concept of a captive state - it means that some informal powerful structures control the levers of power. And here it is the other way around, first they seized power, then they also seized these levers of power that exist, with the expectation that even when they fall from power, they can continue to control them.

So - and when they fall from power, their property remains.

When you look at such regimes comparatively, a lot depends on how the regime went - whether it simply lost the elections, so it was occasionally dispossessed, in the sense that they never knew how to do anything without the state, or were there sudden transitions that led to more radical measures.

We are 2000. had a sudden transition without radical measures.

Sudden transitions allow you to make those kinds of radical measures. We had a sudden transition, which was interpreted by one of the main actors as a sudden transition, as continuity. It is a question of the willingness of those who come to power to prosecute it or introduce some sanctions at their disposal, although, frankly, there are few illegal sanctions. I believe that you have a lot of material here to prosecute it, all those riches and all those companies are often towers of cards that collapse as soon as state support collapses. From the moment you open the thing, maybe someone will survive in that situation, but I suspect most won't. Someone's company with experience paving Republic Square can probably be blacklisted the next day, if you want to have that kind of thing. You can say - your weapons ended up in Yemen, you can never deal with them anymore.

In the previous months, there was a heated debate, and it seems that it will continue, and that is whether to boycott the elections or not. What is your point of view??

At the moment, as things stand, for me a boycott is a closer option than going to the polls. I believe that now it is almost impossible to create some kind of conditions so that the elections are not only fair, but also meet the minimum standards. It's like playing a game that you would have lost 8:0 due to the rules, and now someone tells you: go ahead and play, you'll only lose 8:2. In this regard, I certainly do not see any clear sense of participating in all this.

The second thing is this problem imposed by those who are against the boycott - are you doing something with your presence in institutions and the possibility of budget financing, are you building an organization, but so far we have seen what effect it had. Now you simply have to believe that something will change, so that you will not be criticized in the Assembly, or that the money you receive will not be taken from you through various punishments, bills and other things. In this way, you actually perpetuate a situation from which it would be even more difficult to get out of in the next step.

We had that in Hungary; Đurčan lost the elections in 2009, and only in the last elections did he cease to be the main candidate of the opposition. So, he lost elections for 10 years before he went into hiding. If we do so, and we are getting close to it here, if we have people who stand as opposition candidates for almost 10 years, lose elections and will lose them many more times, in this respect, a boycott would be a better pressure to make the conditions in the next step fair.

I would immediately agree to stand for election in two cases. One is that all the mentioned conditions are fulfilled and that you have a guarantee that in a year there will be early elections, with continued dialogue. Another case is that the elections are postponed, as was the case in Macedonia - when there was a threat of a boycott, the elections were postponed.

Can the elections be postponed at all?, they are regular?

Yes, suddenly the Constitution becomes an insurmountable obstacle for you. If there is agreement from all actors, there are certainly instruments in the Constitution that can enable you to do that.

In all that the government has offered so far, there is no media there. And without the media, there is nothing to talk about.

Of course, the media is number one in this regard. You can easily see whether that change exists or not through the media. Simply put, there are control mechanisms. RTS has a Management Board that is state-owned, these other media with a national frequency have REM, "Informer" has a court. That's where they belong.

But here we go again, the prosecution should do the work, courts...

If you really want to ensure the conditions, those steps can be taken, and quite simply.