Trust, the most expensive Serbian word

Behind his resignation, Miloš Vucevic invited the FBI and FSB to come to Serbia. Why? So to establish whether and who in Belgrade on March 15 used a sound cannon or a similar weapon against peaceful demonstrators.

"Nikola Pašić is turning in his grave," says an old colleague and friend. Namely, in 1914, under the terrifying ultimatum of Vienna - the blunt and brutal threat of war - Serbia refused to allow the Austro-Hungarian authorities to conduct an investigation into the Sarajevo assassination.

Vucevic's statement shows more than anything else how low the trust of the citizens is in the progressive government or, as they like to say - the state. They also have a good reason. Namely, citing examples when the regime openly lied to the public is equivalent to looking for holes in pots. "Vreme" does not have enough pages to count. However - purely for the sake of illustration - it is worth recalling two.

The first is Vučić's claim that the canopy at the Railway Station in Novi Sad has not been reconstructed; the second - accusing the students of injuring a plainclothes gendarme during the RTS blockade. It is not possible to find the truth in both statements of the president of the state even with a microscope: while the canopy was restored, it immediately became clear that the gendarme was injured by his colleague in uniform.

Why waste printing ink on well-known facts? The reason is simple. Only three and a half hours after the event at the protest, which deeply disturbed Serbia, Vučić said that the government did not use any sound cannon. No investigation and waiting for its results, the head of state already knew everything. Anyone who says otherwise is slandering and lying, and will be held responsible for that. This performance by Vučić also had scenographic support - like a ficus, next to him sat the newly appointed Acting Director of Police - Dragan Vasiljević.

Now we need to see the mother's son from the "structures" who would dare to say something different or at least express the slightest skepticism about the truth of the head of state. That is why the MUP, the army and the BIA - each for himself - claim in concert "we are not our mothers, we do not have a sound cannon, nor do we know what it is".

If Vučić thought with his blitzkrieg speech on March 15 that he would remove the sound cannon from the agenda, he missed the stands, let alone the goal itself. After all, this kind of losing the ball while dribbling the post has been his manner and trademark for months. Concretely - only now do citizens have reason to again doubt the statements of the authorities.

Something had to be done, as much as damage control. This task struck Vučević, who cried out - well, when you don't believe us, we'll call the Americans and the Russians. In his resignation, the Prime Minister obviously did not understand that he had burned all the statements from the police, the army and the BIA, the institutions for which he is really responsible.

And why? Just to panic show how his boss is the master of the situation, even though even the gatekeepers at the Federation Palace know his past. Nothing else.

Aside from Vučić's protection of Vučić with his body. Maybe the military, police and BIA really don't have a sonic cannon or something, so they couldn't even use it. But that's not a sign that it might not be someone else.

Maybe one day the current head of state will explain under which rock he found veterans of the Red Berets and brought them under his window in Pioneer Park. Their real commander Milorad Ulemek Legija together with several members carried out the kidnapping and liquidation of Ivan Stambolić and twice tried to kill Vuk Drašković. The same man, together with the head of the Zemun clan, Dušan Spasojević, organized the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić. The trigger was pressed by Legion's right hand, lieutenant colonel in the Red Berets, Zvezdan Jovanović...

This entire Unit - with its prominent officer Živojin Žika Ivanović waving a stick in the "ćaciland" - comes from the very heart of the darkness of the Yugoslav wars. For almost half of its existence (1991–2003), the Red Berets did not officially exist.

More precisely - under different companies they carried out the dirtiest jobs and wrongdoings for Slobodan Milošević, merging and sharing with Arkan's Guard. This allowed the then regime to hire the Unit in secret for whatever it thought of, under the supervision of the State Security. And to make things even better, Milosevic could always disown them, claiming that they were some kind of volunteers about whom he had no idea.

By lining up the Red Berets in "Ćaciland", Vučić showed all of Serbia that he doesn't hate their reputation one bit. Also that he appreciates very much modus operandi Units: in uniform and civilian as needed, non-existent, always at hand, secret and ready for anything.

Can anyone seriously swear that a group in the spirit of the Red Berets - adapted to new times and circumstances - still does not exist? Is there a mother's son who doubts that such a team is able to "fire" a sound cannon, and that it remains a secret for everyone except a few key people at the top of the state? And speaking of all this, how much does one really care about the statements of the institutions under the progressive regime?

The case of the sound cannon shows that trust is the most expensive word in Serbia. In reality, the majority of citizens have not trusted the regime for a long time, and until the student uprising - they didn't even trust each other.

The case of the sound cannon can now serve as an "action", that is, the cheapening of the most expensive word in the Serbo-Croatian language. The road to restoring trust can begin with the formation of a parliamentary committee. There, policemen, gendarmes, policemen, citizens as witnesses, experts, Vucevic's Russians and Americans and numerous others could present all their knowledge and answer essential questions. Certainly the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić.