Attempt to tame civil servants

Since the appearance of the forgotten Dr. Nebojša Stefanović in October 2016, after the liquidation of the drug dealer and associate of the Serbian secret police Aleksandar Stanković - Salet Mutavo, there has not been a more slanderous public appearance by someone from the regime than the one on Sunday, October 5, on TV Pink by Aleksandar Vučić in the falsification program Hit Tweet.

Just as the then Minister of Police, surrounded by a troop of masked special forces, spoke about criminal Montenegrin clans, threats, executions and the like, which the majority of Serbian citizens could not "understand in any way", so now Vučić in the latest multi-hour reality show told stories that, it seems, could only be understood by a few, and that, apparently, was the goal: to send them a certain message.

LIST (NE)SUBMISSIVE

Obviously, his closest team has assessed that now is the moment to enter a new phase of the "fight against the invisible enemy", which is not those whom he routinely mentions every day in the most derogatory way and collectively calls them blockaders and terrorists, but enemies "within the system" - those who do not want or have not yet come to "kiss the ring", and as such represent a threat to Vučić and those close to him.

In other words, there are people who still work in the public administration system in Serbia, "for the state", but who do not wait for Vučić's invitation to do something, but do so within the framework of the rules and norms prescribed by law, which should otherwise be the standard in the behavior of all public officials at all levels and branches of government.

Vučić focused on the problems caused by citizens and students to those individuals, whom he suspects might "betray" him at the crucial moment, so he mostly dedicated his long-hour performance to threatening them. Of course, it was all wrapped up in a wafer: little talk by the host, even less by the other guest, professor from the Faculty of Political Sciences Dragana Mitrović, the first person from that institution to support the regime and not Dragan Simeunović, and then Vučić holds the bank and talks about anything - from the way the canopy was demolished to forecasts about the Third World War and how he is a better forecaster than French President Emmanuel Macron.

Behind everything, the message is very clear: 11 months has shown him who listens to him unquestioningly and who doesn't, who, as Ana Brnabić says a day later on the same channel, "answers the phone and who doesn't", and he is now starting the "internal game" - a term used by basketball coaches - to see and list who is on his side in the public sector, but also in the secret services, and who is not submissive enough or not at all.

INTIMIDATION AND THREATS

He understood that he had a problem in the police, the prosecutor's office and in the judicial branch of government, because it turns out that "some personnel" who were "brought in" by his former great friend Aleksandar Đorđević, a lawyer, diplomat and former head of the BIA, are not what they should have been and that is why Vučić failed to - with all the threats of arrests, long detentions and announcements of indictments - intimidate the people and citizens, and cancel the rebellion that is still going on.

He did manage to use money and blackmail to quell the rebellion in the schools, to partially stop all blockades at the Universities, but he has not yet established full control. That's why he himself is the main blockader - he still holds the unsanitary settlement and paramilitary base "Ćaciland" in the center of Belgrade because he is not sure that "everything is over".

photo: Tanjug

What he still hasn't managed, despite Dacic's condescension and submission to the police director, despite Nenad Stefanović from the High Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade, is to have the complete loyalty of the security system. That's how he said on Sunday that the BIA betrayed him in a way. Also, he publicly said that he did not find out about the Russian camp in Sunčana dolina in the west of Serbia from the police and the BIA, but "privately", and this could mean that some of the foreign services not only informed him but also ordered that it be cleaned up. It is hard to believe that the BIA was so uninformed and did not know what pro-Russian activists and spies were doing with the Moldovans in Western Serbia, but this speaks more to the fact that, despite the fact that Vučić removed Vulin from the head of the BIA and appointed his faithful loyalist Vladimir Orlić, part of the BIA is still under the great influence of Vulin, who seems to compete within the service with Dr. Marko Parezanović, who manages the "operations" of the Serbian secret police, who will be a bigger Russian.

One service, three wings, and that worried Vučić, so he complained that he had not received anything from the student plenums for months and that he could not believe that they could not do anything, but that the "truth was revealed" only when the "patriotic students" themselves started recording and reporting what was "being done there".

It could be said that Vučić used the public space and "addressing" to intimidate his own, and it is probably the easiest way for him, because it is the only model in which he can send messages to tens of thousands of addresses at the same time.

photo: муп

EVEN DEEPER BOTTOM

The next message, which we have not heard in such a form until now, was sent to the account of Misha Bachulov, an activist and oppositionist from Novi Sad, whom Vučić briefly accused of causing the canopy to collapse - and that only because he was walking in front of the station building three hours before it fell. If it weren't dangerous, it would be funny: Vučić and his team obviously thought that in the second week of October this would be the topic - is Misha Bachulov a terrorist who organized the fall of the canopy and the murder of 16 citizens.

This, hitherto unrecorded, public attack on a man, whatever one may think of him, was accompanied by an additional attack on the prosecution and the judiciary, which Vučić accuses of not conducting the investigation properly. According to him, it is even more unusual that the video appeared only now, and the strangest thing is that Bachulov, probably a world-famous terrorist similar to Osama bin Laden, was not at least heard on that basis.

Of course, Vučić is not crazy to believe in these things - this is just another mechanism of pressure on the prosecutor's office and the police, indirectly on the court, which has an investigation and for now accuses some people, whom Vučić calls friends, of having stolen more than 100 million dollars during the railway reconstruction work. "Does anyone think that Toma Momirov, who is so rich, would take some money," said Vučić that evening, without being able to remember the name of the former Minister of Construction and Trade, Tomislav Momirović. Slips aside, there is a system in this "madness".

photo: m. dragoslavić / fonet

THEY RUINED OUR COUNTRY.

The August arrest, under the baton of organized crime prosecutor Mladen Nenadić, seriously disturbed Vučić and his team, and from that moment he became more radical in his approach and more unscrupulous in the way he deals with students and citizens. It's as if he feels that what seems impossible could happen here - that one morning he too would be picked up by the police and taken to the Prosecutor's Office for organized crime for questioning. And that thought, however incredible it may seem, creates bad feelings and forces a different policy.

He talks about it on October 5, and it's not by chance: he wanted to "steal that day", 25 years since he fled through the streets of Belgrade, fearing that he would be arrested during the overthrow of Milosevic. Now he wanted to make a point, to show that he is also "giving the truth about that day", but also to send a message - don't let anyone think of going against me.

It turned out that not everyone in the police, prosecution and secret services is ready to cover up every criminal and corrupt act because the protest organized by the students had a capillary effect - the information spread everywhere, reached everyone, and the fact of corruption that leads to tragedies does not leave anyone in Serbia indifferent. Not even hardened skirmishers, opportunists of all party colors, ready to swallow everything just to stay with those who have power in their hands.

The rebellion of the most educated stratum of society - the basis of its development and the development of the state, those who carry and spread knowledge - could not leave a mark on anyone in the public and state sector. And that trace is hard to erase by the continuous repetition of the story about the colored revolution, which, by the way, was brought to Vučić's world by Dr. Marko Parezanović, as one of the "experts in that field".

"They destroyed our state" repeats Vučić, and as if he is talking about the effects of his rule, because it is shown, in these 11 months of protest and rebellion, how much the system has actually been destroyed - not by the action of foreign powers, but by surrendering to the will of one person who still believes that it is not necessary to formally "address" an institution, but it is enough to "call him on the phone" and order him what to do. His parroting and preachy repetition of the phrase "The time of responsibility is coming" should be understood in this light, which concerns those from the public sector and the state system who should be removed because they have not shown enough commitment to the leader.

TWICE

The question for the people of the system is - who will be first? Will the police, the prosecution and the judiciary, will those from education and from the university or from the public administration wait to "cut off the heads", and that of a small number of honest and brave ones, or will they work more strongly according to the law, insisting on its implementation, and not on the will of one person.

Perhaps we will soon witness this unraveling in another case that is kept "under the carpet" - the General Staff case - because there is a dangerous stench of corruption and it seems that the team from the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime sensed it well. They have two paths before them: to listen to Vučić's message from Pinko and ignore the "sleazy job" or, acting according to the law, determine who wanted to turn a cultural asset into a brothel. That question now also has a symbolic meaning.