Selaković: Foreign services are fighting against the demolition of the General Staff

As we know, the members of the Serbian Parliament voted lex specialis which enables the demolition of the General Staff, even though both the domestic and international professional public were urged not to do so, and even though they violated the basic laws of Serbia on the protection of cultural heritage and planning, as well as the Constitution.

The arguments of SNS MPs during the discussion on lex specialis were even that Nikola Dobrović, the author of the General Staff, is not an architect and that the employees of the City or Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments are non-cooperative and therefore not competent to decide whether the General Staff is or is not a cultural asset.

Selaković's information

Culture Minister Nikola Selaković added new information to what was heard in the Parliament Hall on Sunday, November 9, through TV Informer. Let us remind you that according to the fate of the General Staff, the Ministry of Culture is legally directly responsible.

Namely, Minister Selaković revealed that foreign services are fighting against the demolition of the General Staff because they do not want us to get closer to the USA. He said that a friend warned him about it back in January, but that he didn't believe it then.

However, Selaković reminded, what happened was that after that friendly information, which he did not believe, the then director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Dubravka Đukanović, resigned, accusing several ministers of pressure to remove the protection from the General Staff, and then her successor, acting director Goran Vasić, was arrested on suspicion of falsifying the document on the basis of which the Government of Serbia revoked the status of a cultural monument to the General Staff building last November.

Now, Minister Selaković explained to the audience of TV Informer, it is clear that Dubravka Đukanović "marketed her allegations about pressure as a future basis for the activities of the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime (TOK)", which "according to the express procedure began to carry out certain actions".

Dubravka Djukanovic

In her written resignation letter to Minister Selaković, Dubravka Đukanović wrote that "on May 22, 2024, at a meeting held at the Ministry of Finance, attended by Marko Stojčić, chief urban planner of the city of Belgrade, and representatives of the Ministry of Culture, Miomir Đorđević, Secretary of State, Slavica Jelača, Secretary of the Ministry, and Danijela Vanušić, Assistant Minister in the Sector for Cultural Heritage and Digitization, in addition to Siniša Malog and Luka Tomić, Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Finance, I was presented that if, as the director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, I do not support the removal of the protection for the General Staff buildings in Belgrade and thereby enable the demolition of this building, I should resign on June 3rd".

When "Vremena" asked her to comment on Selaković's information in which she was named, Dubravka Đukanović replied that the investigation was ongoing, and therefore she should not speak about it.

Selaković about Vasić

And as for the arrest of Goran Vasić, according to Minister Selaković, "TOK released a sensational announcement that Vasić confessed to a criminal offense. This happened six months ago, but we still do not have an indictment or a trial which, due to the plea agreement, would proceed according to abbreviated procedure... The whole story was actually aimed at President Aleksandar Vučić", according to Selaković.

According to the public statements of lawyers, it is hard to believe that the acting director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Monuments wrote on his own initiative and thus falsified a document proposing to revoke the status of a cultural asset to the General Staff, but it is not known whether the TOK investigation included the ministers of the competent ministries - after all, according to the procedure, the Ministry of Culture proposed to the Government of Serbia to revoke the status of a cultural asset to the General Staff.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Marko Đurić also felt that Minister Selaković needed to be defended, who said at the Assembly session during the discussion on lex specialis that he considered his colleague the best politician of the younger generation, condemning, as he said, the insults and accusations made against him in the Assembly.

A joke in the city center

In the aforementioned latest guest appearance on TV Informer, Minister Selaković said that the General Staff building is now just a "dysfunctional ruin and a mockery in the city center", so he wrote down why it occurred to someone to declare that building a cultural monument in 2005, which he commented as follows:

"In that decision and the accompanying documents, the building was treated as if it had never been bombed, as if it were a cultural property that you can walk through... Two years later, the Republic Directorate for Property asked the Ministry of Culture to demolish the building. The Ministry of Defense subsequently asked for an expert opinion, and the experts expressed the opinion that it was a time bomb in the city center, dangerous for passers-by, and they want that building to be removed. It is true that in 2016 the Government of Serbia wanted to (started) the renovation of that building, but after putting it on paper and checking how much it would cost, they gave up," Selaković said.

He did not mention the study of the Faculty of Civil Engineering from 2006, according to which the General Staff building damaged in the bombing should be repaired and rebuilt.