"Luck looks at you, the devil doesn't", is a saying that could be used to describe the position of the Government of Serbia, which these days marked one hundred days of "work". If we look only at the form, without the content, everything is on their side: the Prime Minister is a respectable expert of world reputation, has a good demeanor and a pleasant voice. Ministers and ministers are not overly well-known to the public, so a naive visitor to Serbia in the spring and summer of 2025 could be mistaken and think that we have some kind of government of experts.
The content, however, is much darker. In the past week, a lot has been said and written about the first hundred days of the government of Đura Matsut, and all these contents carry the same message: this government essentially does not exist, it is irrelevant and a puppet. And that's probably true. The darkness, however, emerges when those portfolios of the ministers are searched which are connected with the ways in which many citizens of Serbia have simply died in the last hundred days. And the citizens suffered in almost every imaginable way: security, health, financial, from fires, from loss of jobs, from persecution, from arrests and fanciful indictments. They suffered the most in the domain of basic human rights and personal dignity. It all started long ago, but in many areas it has culminated recently, so the question is whether Matsuto's government is puppet or, perhaps, sadistic.
To begin with, let's look only at Đura Matsuta. No, we will not talk about "Hlebane". It is much more interesting that in the hundred days that he has been prime minister, he has not given a single interview to the domestic media. He was prime minister for seventy-two days when he gave a single interview: to the Russian state news agency TASS. And that's where he turned to - the LGBT community. It is even more interesting that Macut travels a lot in Serbia, but the public only finds out about it when he leaves. For example, ten days ago he visited Kragujevac and Novi Pazar. The public found out about it through the social networks of these two local governments, although the City of Kragujevac stated on its Facebook that Macut was in the presence of "numerous media and citizens". There was no one.
MOST SUCCESSFUL MINISTRY
If we look at which department had the most "work" in these hundred days, the Ministry of Internal Affairs stands out as the absolute champion, headed by Ivica Dacic. They pushed, beat, arrested them at pedestrian crossings, then beat them again in the police stations, then tied the beaten to beds. If they were having an easy day, they would only write fines for misdemeanors. Most often traffic, but the experience of life in Serbia since March teaches us that there is a thin line between a traffic offense and a violation of the constitutional order...
Just in the week from July 2 to 9, the police in Serbia detained between 70 and 100 citizens per day. According to media estimates, more than 6000 citizens went through legitimization, that is, identity verification in the same week.
The police actively violated the university's autonomy, beating students, and the most striking case is the case of student Luka Mihajlović from Zrenjanin. He was beaten and detained at the "See you on Vidovdan" protest. Due to serious injuries, the police transferred him to KBC Zemun. However, it seems that the prosecutor was not informed about this, so he issued a warrant for Luka. So this guy spent a few days in the hospital, undergoing operations, receiving visits, until the police, who placed him there, "found" him and informed the prosecutor and the court. From that moment, Luki began to be detained, and it turned out that the officers of the Administration for the Execution of Criminal Sanctions handcuffed him, completely immobile, in the hospital bed. Under public pressure, he was placed under house arrest after completing hospital treatment.
SILVER MEDAL FOR MINISTRY OF REVENGE
Although new to the task entrusted to him, Minister of Education Dejan Vuk Stanković is living his dream, at least the one he disclosed to the media when he was still the regime's favorite analyst. And that dream was a fierce confrontation with universities in Serbia, especially with the University of Belgrade and its rector, Vladan Đokić. Dejan Vuk Stanković dreamed that he would break the blockades and arrest the professors, and then he got his chance. He came to a pre-prepared ground: that senseless Decree on Norms and Standards of Higher Education had already been passed. According to the previous regulations, 20 hours a week were to be devoted to teaching and related activities, and the other 20 hours were dedicated to scientific research, i.e. artistic work. The new Regulation significantly changes that relationship, and 35 hours per week are set aside for teaching, and five hours for scientific research or artistic work. A new phase of living over the academic community could begin. They have not received salaries since March, that is, they receive some strange amounts, so small that even the Ministry is ashamed to state them, so in letters to the faculties it says: half of one eighth will be paid. In the normal world, that's one sixteenth. But we are where we are.
Dejan Vuk Stanković will also be remembered as the Minister of Education for whose mandate the rector, vice-rectors, deans, vice-deans and professors were brought and interrogated. And we will also remember him as the minister during whose time the police violated the autonomy of universities, first at the Faculty of Law, and then at several others. The most recent incident, but the closest to his dream of breaking the blockades, is happening this week, on the night between Monday and Tuesday, when masked thugs invade the State University in Novi Pazar and throw out male and female students.
MINISTRY OF LABOR AND DISMISSAL
Milica Đurđević Stamenkovski, the Minister of Labour, Employment and Social Affairs, is not often in public like, after all, neither is the rest of the government. At least she is not there in person to make a statement, interview, guest in a TV studio. However, she is very present in spirit, especially when someone's life needs to be ruined. The biggest success of this ministry is that on July 23, it confirmed the dismissal of Goran Perišić, one of the union leaders in EPS, by canceling the earlier decision of the labor inspector in his case.
At the same time, Minister Đurđević Stamenkovski rejected Perišić's request to annul the decision on dismissal. Perišić, who worked at EPS in Lazarevac, was fired on February 21, 2025, after publicly pointing out irregularities and suspected abuses within this public company, such as dubious public procurement, nepotism and abuse of official authority within the local business unit of EPS.
Another labor rights case gained public attention just last month. Senior nurse Tijana Bikar Jaćimović did not even have time to return to her workplace following the verdict of the Basic Court in Pancevo, and the administration of the Health Center sent her a new annex to the employment contract, sending her back to the outpatient clinic in Dolovo. Thus, Tijana Bikar Jaćimović was transferred from the position of head of social medicine at the Pančevo Health Center to Dolovo, a village about 30 kilometers from the city, to the position of a nurse. In addition, her salary was reduced by deducting the coefficient for the managerial position.
On July 1, the basic court in Pancevo annulled this annex as illegal. However, Jaćimović did not have time to return to work from sick leave, and a new annex arrived from the Health Center with certain changes, but the same destination - Dolovo and a lower salary due to the loss of the management position. Now she is facing a new round of lawsuits, trials, hell... All because of her support for student protests.
photo: vladimir sporčić / tanjugHOWEVER THERE ARE: Ministers in the Government of Serbia
MINISTRY FOR HEAD IN A BAG
The Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure, Aleksandra Sofronijević, could have been someone whom the public could see right through. Getting to that place after the arrest and detention of the predecessor, accused of the fall of the canopy, is not easy. That is, it should not be. Nevertheless, Minister Sofronijević had her moment of achievement on the Pakovraća-Požega stretch due to the opening of that section of the highway and the associated Munjino brdo tunnel.
We don't have to wonder if that part of the road, like the tunnel, doesn't have all the permits - they don't because the Government suspended the Tunnel Safety Regulation just to officially open that section. The minister, in fact, walked around the regime close to the media and assured the citizens that everything was safe. However, it did not help her that the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, considered the fact that the hill was moving by 0,1 millimeter as unimportant. Moreover, it brought additional anxiety to the public. The subsequent decision to have medical teams from Čačak on duty near the tunnel did not help either. And it only got worse that since the opening a few weeks ago, the tunnel has been closed every hour due to "minor works".
After the fall of the canopy at the railway station in Novi Sad, one would have expected the government to be more careful, to do everything according to the law and regulations down to the last comma. But that didn't happen. They cannot be changed, no matter how much they change their positions. The impossibility of change is deeply rooted because now we already have countless proofs of that, everything is decided by the president of Serbia. The job of the ministers is only to implement all this in a particularly cruel and insidious way.
RESOR: BURNING SITE
One of the characteristics of this composition of the Government of Serbia is that even those who closely follow the domestic political scene do not know who the ministers of certain important departments are. One such is Dragan Glamočić, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management.
He recently came into the limelight, but - on the phone. After the big fires that engulfed the south of Serbia, President Vučić went on a tour of the burning areas. People complained about how much damage the fire caused them, and he called Glamočić on the phone and "thundered" in front of the cameras that the citizens should be compensated for the damage. It would be comical if it wasn't this government and this president; that before that the local powerful did not refuse to help the citizens because, they say, they did not vote for them; that the students in the blockade who went to help did not later report how the citizens were being blackmailed - if they receive help from the students, they should not count on the help of the state.
And so, in one hundred days of his mandate, Dragan Glamočić's success is that the president called him on the phone. All else is ash and smoke.
MINISTRIES FOR BEAN
For the first hundred days, no ministry stood out for anything good. But there are those who managed not to stand out at all. For example, Bratislav Gašić is the biggest surprise in this regard, because his outbursts and gaffes go out of hand. But there were no major scandals in the defense department. Admittedly, Gašić is an "old hook" in the ministry (of anything), so it is not interesting to deal with him in the context of these hundred days.
It is similar with the Minister of Health Zlatibor Lončar. His political activity has been frightening by default for 13 years, and even if we pull out some scandal from him recently, nothing will surpass the fact that he gave the health information of citizens to the media in 2013 or the fact that some media announced in 2015 that he successfully welcomed a baby who was transferred by helicopter from Novi Pazar to Belgrade. We know the epilogue: that helicopter fell and neither the baby, nor the doctors, nor the crew members survived.
Apart from Gašić, who is a kind of wild card, ready to take on any department, we also have Nikola Selaković. He started from the judiciary and ended up in culture. Partocracy still reigns in that department, and the latest revenge against artists for supporting students is the appointment of Dragoslav Bokan as the president of the Board of the National Theatre. Minister Selaković never spoke about the trampling of members of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra during the fifteen-minute silence on Studentski trg.
And here we have Vladan Glišić, Minister for Public Investments. From his success, he noted the statement that he "attracted beautiful women" all his life, as well as KRIK's discovery that his ex-partner owns three apartments, of which she herself knows she only has one. But let's not forget that Glišić, a minister in the previous government as well, was a man on a mission: to target, insult and mark the rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Đokić, as the "face of evil", the "leader of the blockaders" and thus start the persecution of the academic community.
Tatjana Matsura, the minister without portfolio, has recently been practicing keeping aloof. In July, two femicides occurred in Serbia within 24 hours, so Matsura managed to stand out. One should be careful when criticizing her work because she is inclined to declare every word of criticism as the violence she suffers. Therefore, in order not to appear violent, this is not about her, but about her actions and her work.
This minister issued a statement regarding the two femicides. She warned that violence is a serious problem and devoted most of the announcement to one message, formulated in several ways: that women should report violence. Therefore, on the occasion of two femicides on the same day, the cabinet called on all women who suffer any form of violence not to remain silent and to contact the police, centers for social work, and the prosecutor's office, according to the Ministry's announcement. They invited citizens and families to report. True, some changes to the law were announced that would expand the scope of the institutions' activities.
The problem with this kind of announcement is multi-layered. First, a large number of femicides in Serbia occur after the woman has already reported the violence, and the abuser has been sanctioned. Second, no one doubts the quality of laws in the area of protecting women from violence: they are good, implementation is a problem. Certainly, Matsura continues the practice of his predecessors and predecessors - whatever happens, the system has not failed. Although, whenever, because of the murders of women, an extraordinary supervision of an institution is carried out, it turns out that the system failed, not once, but persistently.
A MINISTER WHO WANTS TO LEARN
Boris Bratina took over the department of information with the statement that he had to read a lot of material in order to know what he was getting into. Looks like he's still reading. Although the central and most critical event on the media scene throughout the spring and summer is the contested election of the members of the REM Council, the minister does not bother about it. Another thing that is repeated periodically, even in these hundred days, are attacks on journalists, and even threats to entire media houses, such as the letter sent to Television N1.
We don't even count pressures of lower intensity anymore, but let's remind that "Students who want to learn" sent some insane "warning before threat" (there is no more meaningful name for this work) in April, in which they threatened lawsuits to anyone who criticizes Aleksandar Vučić. The editorial office of "Vremena" also received the letters. We don't know how the president is not subject to public criticism. If we knew, we wouldn't be an independent media.
And when it comes to independence, in Bratina's sector we have a completely wild pro-regime propaganda machine, which sends wishes for total destruction to dissenters every day. This makes any dialogue impossible. Because how do you conduct a civilized dialogue with someone who throws out thirty insults per minute in a live program. And how to conduct a dialogue with someone who, at least according to what was said in court, motivated a mentally unstable woman to attack the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš, Natalija Jovanović, with a knife. Yes, the woman who attacked Natalija Jovanović said in court that she had mental problems, that she did not take therapy that morning, and that she had been following TV Informer for days. Additionally, because of everything she heard there, she thought that her children and grandchildren were her enemies because they supported the protests.
Of course, not everything that we see these months and make aware of the responsibility of only this composition of the government. But, they are unquestionably a continuation of the policy that leads to such abuses, manipulations and, ultimately, indescribably terrible individual fates.
LAST GOVERNMENT
Day by day, they packed for a hundred days. He will accumulate maybe two or three hundred. But it is not easy for them. Apart from the fact that these are the people in charge of directing and legitimizing Vučić's arbitrariness, they are also the people whose windows citizens come to whistle at. These are the people who cannot celebrate one hundred days of work in Knjaževac without being guarded by the Gendarmerie. These are people who move around the country where the ministers are in secret, like bandits. They meet with the local Jatakas, then quickly run back. It's hard to imagine them enjoying all this. Therefore, they are the last government of Vučić. They will hardly find people willing to be humiliated by him, and the citizens despise them.
