Director promotion Military Security Agencies (VBA) The promotion of Đure Jovanić (47) to the rank of lieutenant general could only surprise the uninitiated, because he is an officer with a turbo career, faithful and loyal to Aleksandar Vučić. However, the Ministry of Defense announced that the promotion was "regular".
Military police officer who was lucky enough to be elected in 2012 handbag carrier to the then Minister of Defense Vučić, to be his adjutant, he probably could not even have guessed what kind of meteoric career he would have - from 2012 to 2019, he rapidly progressed from captain to brigadier general.
And all that extraordinary. Partisan commanders did not have such a thing in the Second World War and after.
Then came the promotion to major general, and now to lieutenant general, and that "regularly". Although, according to Vučić's logic, this is normal, the man lasted several years in the same position, it is time to improve.
Why Vučić's logic? At one time, when Bratislav Gašić was appointed director of the BIA, he said that "Bata lasted a year and a half without office". And Gašić, at Vučić's request, resigned from the post of Minister of Defense because of the sexist remark that he "likes female journalists who kneel easily" made in front of a journalist who bent down to avoid being caught by cameramen.
How is progressing?
From 2012 to 2018, Jovanić was promoted four times, from captain to colonel, which was unprecedented until then. Even at the time when the Chief of the General Staff was Nebojša Pavković, who handed out promotions with a fist and a hat - it was enough for him to like how someone properly greeted him, and he was immediately promoted. If the same thing happens the next time, a new act follows.
It's not a rumor, it's a true story - one ensign of the first class from "Cobra" - otherwise a member of the first formation, the special division of the JNA from which "Cobra" was created - submitted an official request to the Guard command to be granted the rank of major in 2002, before retirement.
Citing examples to whom Pavković gave a rank outside the regulations, he explained that due to the nature of his work, he was not on the route of the Chief of the General Staff's movement, so he could not meet him or greet him properly.
And then, as a peak of irony, he wrote that receiving the rank of major would be a special honor for his family and the village of Jarinje in Kosovo, where he is from, because until now it had no major. The ensign did not receive the rank of major, but his mockery of the military system embodied in Pavković is still remembered and retold.
Two messes
The same is the case with Jovanić, whose lightning-fast progress "Vreme" wrote about in 2021, in the text "Jet Powered Career", so there is no need to repeat the details. There were no wars, no crises or emergency situations, but man is progressing.
In spite of the two major public scandals of the service he heads. Case one - a farce about a "Russian spy" from the Army, a poorly directed vaudeville experts iz VBA film. Even some of them, rare professionals, are ashamed of it.
Of course Vučić needed that then, so they invented an affair, whose voluntary actor, a retired lieutenant colonel of the ZK, agreed to play the role of a spy. His name is known to everyone who has dealt with this issue, including the author of this text. That "spy" is still at large today, he has not even been prosecuted, because it was a classic educational film of the kind that "Zastava Film" used to make for the needs of the JNA.
The second case - photos of two VBA officers secretly monitoring and filming Vasu Antic, the brother of the former president of the Military Trade Union of Serbia, Novica Antic, appeared in the cafe. And Vaso has connections with the army only that in 1998 and 1999 he served in the military service in the 63rd Parachute Brigade and participated in the hell of Košar, Pastrik and other hills on the border with Albania.
They shot it amateurishly with a camera built into a bag, as if it were the 21s, not the XNUMXst century. How does the VBA come to monitor and supervise civilians, and is there an order for that? Jovanić and his associates have never explained it, nor will they. The two officers who were burglarized were sent to other centers of the VBA.
A man without a biography
Vaso Antic is not the only civilian processed by the VBA. There are other people there, including journalists. The author of this text was once told by a member of the MUP in civilian clothes: "I didn't know you were such a guy." Pay attention, look discreetly - wherever you are, there is that girl, the blonde."
When asked who she was, he answered "green". Translated from the police and BIA languages - from the VBA.
And when it comes to Jovanić, the fact that he did not appear at the awarding of the edict on promotions and appointments, which Gašić placed under Vučić's photo hanging in the place of honor, catches the eye. There is no photo or biography of him on the VBA website either. It says only "Director Đuro Jovanić".
When you click on "deputy director" - Đuro Jovanić is also there. On the website of the Ministry of Defense, where the names of officials are published, there is a photo of Jovanić when he was a colonel. There is no biography.
But it is important that he became a lieutenant general, which, as the ensign RV would write, is a tribute to his Apatin, which until now did not have an officer of that rank.
If this continues, in a little while he will catch up with his namesake, and he comes from the same Lika region, the national hero Đoku Jovanić, who was a lieutenant general. And he commanded the famous Sixth Lika Proletarian Division "Nikola Tesla".
