Djilas in Kragujevac: Dissolve BIA, Halt EXPO
At a rally in Hotel Kragujevac, the top name on the European Serbia list said BIA staff would be sent home and the EXPO project stopped, with an inquiry into every dinar.
The European Serbia list announced in Kragujevac that, if it takes power, it would dissolve the Security Intelligence Agency (BIA) at the first session of the new government and form a new one, and that the EXPO project would be stopped immediately. The announcements were made at a rally in Hotel Kragujevac on Wednesday evening by Dragan Djilas, the list’s top candidate and president of the Freedom and Justice Party. The rally was billed for 6 p.m., and the list’s other leading candidates, Marinika Tepic and Zdravko Ponos, also spoke.
What would happen to BIA employees?
According to Djilas, a distinction would be made among the employees themselves. The new agency would not take over everyone from the old one, only those who did the work of protecting the state.
“We will send all BIA employees home. Those who are professionals and who dealt with protecting the state will be brought back to work. Those who protected not the state but Vucic’s regime will not.”
Djilas also said European Serbia, if it governs, would immediately halt the EXPO project, which was described at the rally as the biggest robbery in Serbia’s history. Inquiries into every dinar spent would follow. The reasoning given was that you cannot face the world with the most corrupt project in the country.
Tepic: “kilograms of evidence” and incidents on election day
Marinika Tepic said European Serbia is the only list offering a European policy and that citizens must have that option on the ballot, because a considerable number of people would not vote for any other list if there is no European one. She also spoke about the incidents she expects on the streets on election day, October 25.
“This list is the only guarantee that after that we will be able to move ahead with accelerated EU accession, that we will have an orderly, modern, democratic, European country where order is known, where the system is known, where there is justice and where the various Palmas, Zvoncics, Malovics and their thugs, the parasystem, the paramilitary camps, all those who will try on the 25th to stage incidents on the streets, will no longer exist! Not by coming to harm, of course, but because they will end up where they belong, and that is behind bars. This coalition is the only one that has kilograms of evidence, indictments are already prepared today, not when someone thinks of it afterward, and everything is ready to be called in.”
The claim about evidence and prepared indictments was made by Tepic, and reports from the rally do not say what it refers to.
Ponos: “It is dark, we all see that”
Zdravko Ponos, president of the Serbia Center party, said the list offers a turn toward the future, unlike those who offer stability or prosperity, or who ask that everyone first pause and get their bearings.
“It is dark, we all see that. We need to get moving, there is no waiting! There is no point waiting for the bad times to pass and then deciding what to do. We do not need the stable misery of Serbia today. We do not need stability at this level of prosperity. We need urgent change, there is nothing here to stabilize.”
Earlier the same day, Ponos spoke to Glas Sumadije about what would follow the election. He judged that if power changes hands on October 25, the presidential election would be won even before it is held, and he urged people to vote for one of the three opposition lists.
He also raised the possibility of cooperating with the Student List:
“It would be ideal if they formed a pro-European coalition government. It would do no harm even if it were a Student List government. We would support it, but on the condition that it returns Serbia to the European path. We cannot support any government that would feel the need to spend four years considering which way Serbia should go, because we no longer have time to wait.”
Ponos added that the million and a half voters who support Serbia’s EU membership know this is not a story about foreign policy but about a better life.
Jesic and Teodorovic
Goran Jesic, leader of the Solidarity movement, also spoke at the rally. He warned that a campaign is being waged against the coalition of a kind that, in his words, has not been seen since 1992. Academic Dusan Teodorovic said he has not the slightest doubt that Serbia’s only possible path is the path of Europe.
Reports from the rally contain no response from BIA or from government representatives to Djilas’s announcements. We wrote earlier about Djilas’s reading of the election as a continuation of October 5, and eighteen days of campaigning remain before the October 25 vote.
