"'come on guys, I have some great news."
With these words, Siniša Mali with his shirt sleeves rolled up and a wide smile on Instagram, he invites people to his office. They are conducted by the minister so that ordinary people can see where the man who controls the finances of the whole country is sitting, and informs them that the money is coming and how to apply to that one. Shareholder fund in order to receive state aid from Aleksandar Vučić.
With all the false cordiality, this distribution of 6.000 dinars to all citizens of Serbia of legal age, along with other benefits for pensioners and the socially disadvantaged and a significant reduction in the price of medicines, are just the regime's old trick in the midst of the pre-election campaign, which this time weighs almost a billion euros.
Blurred Share Fund
That "someone" Shareholder fund has been collecting money for years from the privatization of thousands of companies in Serbia out of two thousand, and 4,8 million Serbian citizens own as much as 98 percent of the shares and assets of this Fund. No matter how much progressive promoters try to present it that way, these 6.000 dinars per head of adult citizens of Serbia were not invented by Vučić and Mali.
This is money from the sold state enterprises in which many citizens worked, and many were fired in bad privatizations. Vučić himself, as soon as he came to power, "spit" on privatization, promised arrests and court proceedings, of which nothing happened in the end.
Among the 24 disputed privatizations, the name of Siniša Malog, the mastermind behind the current distribution of money from the Shareholder Fund, who was once one of the directors of the Privatization Agency, is often mentioned.
This is about the money of almost all citizens of Serbia, which the state used for 20 years as it wanted, pouring it over, investing it, turning it over. In fact, she did everything with it - except give it to those it belonged to.
That is why it is absolutely necessary to withdraw it now from the account in the Postal Savings Bank.
Whether to the Dolphinarium or the stadium
There is another trick, which Mali does not explicitly mention.
Young people who were less than 18 years old in 2007, when the Shareholders' Fund was formed, were not given the right to be shareholders according to the law at the time. These are today's 30-year-olds, they now have to subsequently enroll in the Fund, if they want to receive 6.000 dinars, and that is the electorate in which the SNS is struggling the most.
The reaction of many young people to progressive cash gifts is that they hate it, that they are disgusted to take anything from this government, because then they would have a feeling of complicity.
That sounds like a moral decision, but it's a logical fallacy.
Does anyone believe that the state, if they do not take it, would distribute that money fairly to projects of public interest, and not to expos, national stadiums or dolphinariums?
Take from the government, pay for the fight against the government
Instead of a boycott, it would be far more effective to express the protest in another way.
The multiplied figure of 6.000 dinars is not at all negligible if it were to be collectively diverted to the fight against the regime, in the way that the citizens think is best.
One option is to use subscriptions or donations to help independent journalism under attack from the regime, which has already been discussed editors, journalists and public figures. The handful of remaining independent media operate under incredibly difficult conditions.
If you don't want to take even a dinar from Vučić and Malog, even though it belongs to you, you can, for example, pass it on to people who were fired from their jobs by the regime because they opposed it.
And young people, as well as everyone else, could pay that money to students in the blockade. The calculation shows that 45,6 billion dinars will be distributed in this way, and research shows that around 44 percent of Serbian citizens support students. Is it too little if some 20 billion went to fight for a free state, for the pre-election campaign of students?
It would be funny if Vučić, who wanted to bribe the voters before the elections, had this action backfire in this way.
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