Former official of the Democratic Party and Minister of Agriculture in the government, Mirko Cvetković, has long been forgotten by the public. If, like some of his colleagues, he had switched to the progressives in time, perhaps this trial would not have lasted 12 years and only until the first-instance, acquittal. Now there is an appeal, and maybe years and years of a process that has lost all meaning
All cases of acquittal of former ministers of charges for corruption or abuse of position resemble each other, and we don't know what proven guilt looks like since we don't have examples to compare them with. Are the ministers in Serbia unfairly accused or just not enough evidence was gathered? How much have their lives or at least political careers been ruined because of someone's current campaign? All these questions were reopened after the news that former Minister of Agriculture Saša Dragin was acquitted of abuse of office by the High Court in Belgrade.
What is characteristic of this case? Trial lasted for 12 years and will continue, and the tabloids persistently and consistently announced that Dragin will be imprisoned for as long and, the most interesting thing, it happens after another announcement by the President of Serbia that the country is facing a fierce fight against corruption and crime. By the end of March, people will be surprised how strong this fight will be, promised Aleksandar Vučić.
WHO WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO DARE TO SPEAK OUT? - DRAGOSLAV KOSMAJAC
Former Democratic Party official Saša Dragin, Minister of Agriculture in Mirko Cvetković's government, has been forgotten by the public. If, like some of his colleagues, he had switched to the progressives in time, perhaps this trial would not have lasted 12 years and only until the first-instance verdict. Now there is an appeal, and maybe years and years of a process that has lost all meaning.
Namely, Dragin was arrested in 2012, then as a former Minister of Agriculture, on suspicion of having participated in embezzlement with fertilizer and thus caused material damage to Azotara Pancevo. According to the indictment, in the period from 2009 to 2011, Dragin and others are suspected of enabling certain companies to buy fertilizer from Azotara Pancevo at preferential prices, and the budget was damaged by around five million euros. So far, a total of 19 people have been sentenced to various punishments for abuse of office in that procedure, but we have never learned the specific details.
If we look at that case only from the human side, Dragin spent nine months in detention, and then he was under "house arrest" for another seven months. During the investigation, he rejected the accusations, saying that he spent nine months innocently in a "ten-square windowless cell" of the Central Prison, and that this accusation threatened him and his family. Apart from the scanty information that was repeated by all the media, not much can be found about the case itself. On the day he was acquitted in the first instance, the tabloids wrote that the "marathon process" would finally end and that the former minister "faces a sentence of up to 12 years in prison." When this did not happen, there were no texts explaining what was proven and what was not. Saša Dragin's political career no longer exists, which is why he has not been particularly interesting to the media lately.
This case is interesting insofar as it is not an isolated one, but the "Azotar case" was also part of the investigation of "24 controversial privatizations" pointed out by the Council for the fight against corruption under the leadership of Verica Barać. That report was used many times in the campaigns of the current government, whenever there was a need for it. We heard about him most often from the current president, Aleksandar Vučić, who claimed back in 2013 that all controversial privatization cases had been resolved and that charges had been filed in several cases, which seems to mean conviction for the "best student of the Faculty of Law". And it doesn't mean.
Since the results of the fight against corruption during the entire period of Vučić's rule have been modest, to say the least, he has for 13 years been in the habit of making statements around the New Year about a new fight that will change everything and the citizens will clearly see it. Since he is not in the media where he would have a real interlocutor or journalist, there is no one to ask him what prevented the authorities from fulfilling their promise last year. Or the previous one? Or to ask him why the president of the state is busy announcing what and when the independent prosecutor's office will do. And even less is there someone in the prosecution to explain how the president cannot announce arrests and investigations, and that the evidence in court cannot be that Vučić said something. Let's just remember the "biggest drug lord" Dragoslav Kosmajac, whose name no one except Vučić "is allowed to mention" and who in the end was never arrested for drugs, nor was he tried for it, and for what he was tried for he was acquitted.
The most impressive case of the fight against corruption, which took place only in Vučić's head, is certainly the case of Miroslav Mišković. All those years of talk about how the new government would settle accounts with that tycoon who got rich at the expense of the people ended with the same people paying for Vučić's fantasies with compensation of 30 million euros. This has not yet been officially confirmed, but it is known that Mišković was legally acquitted after a ten-year trial, that he spent more than seven months in custody, paid a huge bail, that the most serious accusations were made about him publicly, that even the judge who he did not take away his passport. While Vučić was winning over voters, he said that he would experience the release of Mišković from custody as a personal defeat and that Mišković could not defeat Serbia.
And when Mišković was freed, Vučić said: "Here are the tycoons, let them run your country and steal everything that has been created in the meantime."
And that's it. No remorse, no shame, no apology.
MINISTERIAL SPORT FISHING
While he claimed that the damages in disputed privatizations were 7,7 billion dinars and informed the public that 76 people had been detained, Vučić explained that the government is not dealing only with democrats, but that his fight is a strike against criminals.
At the time when Saša Dragin was arrested, Vučić also announced that certain corruption investigations would shake Serbia, that the most serious experts were working day and night on the "Azotara" case, that citizens would see how politics, economics and the underworld were connected.
"This is where criminals are hit, and the court will say whether we are right or wrong," said Vučić. Then, as now, he emphasized that because of the fight against corruption, he has more and more personal enemies, but that he believes that justice will prevail.
We don't know if justice won, but the law spoke for itself in other cases of the arrest of ministers that we knew about and then forgot. For example, the proceedings against Oliver Dulic, the former Minister of Environmental Protection and Spatial Planning, lasted eleven years. It was about the installation of optical cables and some kind of permits, during the issuance of which the minister allegedly abused his official position. For years, we have read about Dulić's indisputable guilt, so that in the end he was legally acquitted of all charges, together with Assistant Minister Nebojša Janjić and Zoran Drobnjak, who is still the Acting Director of Roads of Serbia.
Let's just remember what we read about the privatization of the Port of Belgrade. Former Economy Minister Predrag Bubalo was arrested in 2013 due to suspicions that he helped two well-known businessmen, Milan Bek and Miroslav Mišković, to buy Luka shares at a preferential price. And again euphemisms - always abuse and help, never theft and corruption. Even this milder qualification has not been proven.
Former Minister of Telecommunications Jasna Matić was arrested in 2014 on suspicion that, as the director of the Agency for the Promotion of Exports and Foreign Investments (SIEPA), she abused her official position and thereby damaged the state budget. She was initially sentenced to seven months in prison, an appeal was sent to the Court of Appeal and the process is still ongoing. The former Minister of Telecommunications, Marija Rašeta Vukosavljević, was acquitted of charges of abuse of official position during the reconstruction of the airport. And we also have the example of the politician Goran Knežević, who was arrested in 2008 on suspicion that, as mayor of Zrenjanin, he rigged tenders and, as it is written in the documents, "perpetrated fraud" with construction land. After 13 months spent in custody, Knežević was released, and in 2013 he was acquitted by a final verdict.
Meanwhile, Goran Knežević switched from the DS to the ruling SNS. Later he was the Minister of Agriculture and Economy.
AND NOW FOR REAL, MOTHERS OF ME
In his last New Year's address, on the eve of 2025, the President of Serbia again - and without any problems - announced a major fight against corruption.
"Until March, it will take much longer, but until March people will see the ferocity, seriousness and strength of the fight against corruption." I promise that to the citizens of Serbia, and they will be surprised how strong and powerful it will be," said Vučić.
He has repeated this several times since then, sometimes slightly threatening that some opposition members will have "bigger problems" in the near future and that it is better for them to keep quiet about protests and student demands.
What is waiting and whether the new fight will ever catch an official of the Serbian Progressive Party, a socialist, at least one of the president's godfathers, another minister who, for example, was accused of eavesdropping on the president, a football official, some sex workers who are promoted on television with a national frequency, some media powerhouses who build themselves temples for life? The list just started here. Maybe the president is serious now, but he can't. Someone will have to explain to him again that the prosecution has to do it. And the court.
Less than two days of blockade - that's how long it took to see how weak and powerless the public media service is, both from the outside and from the inside. At the moment of writing this text, it is the eighth day of the blockade, and the sixth that RTS is not broadcasting its program. They also seem to be facing a strike inside the house. And the essence of blocking RTS is not in what it publishes, but in what it keeps silent
In the months after the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, the flames of rebellion spread throughout Serbia. The first protests started in Novi Sad right after the tragedy. The authorities responded with arrests, police cordons and intimidation, but instead of calming down the protesters, new protests followed.
The rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Đokić, has been the target of top state officials and regime tabloids for months, who label him as an insidious instigator of student protests, an opportunist, "the face of evil" and "the leader of the criminal octopus." How and why a rector became "state enemy number one"
"I'm standing in the cordon, and my daughter is shouting at me 'aw, aw, killers'. What should I do? If they ordered me - I would throw down my baton and bulletproof vest and stand on the side of my child," a police officer from the south of Serbia, who works as needed in the Belgrade Police Brigade, told "Vreme"
The recent formation of the Đura Macuta government is part of the regime's revenge and cynicism. This can be seen most in the "black troika" of new ministers appointed to deal with the parts of society that are the leaders and symbols of the big rebellion that lasted for several months, the cause of which was the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, which claimed 16 human lives. Education, universities, unsolicited media and parts of the judiciary that refuse to listen to orders, either publicly, with announcements, or hiding behind legal procedures, should be dismantled. Those who will have no problem doing everything they are told, even reinforcing the orders with their own inventions, are chosen for this.
Who mentions the extraordinary elections when the rating of the party in power is falling, and according to all surveys, Vučić is not the most important political factor in the country, but the students?
The brutal beating of students and citizens in Novi Sad shows that the regime is not only ready to take revenge - it is actually carrying it out
If in reality the principle of balance is violated - the way the incompetent regime violated the relationship between the concrete elements at the Novi Sad Railway Station - reality will behave like a canopy: it will fail to obey
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