Photo: Jadranka Ilić/TanjugIf Serbia, as Vučić and Brnabić said, would earn hundreds of billions of euros from lithium, then why did they deprive the people of such well-being, without the people expressing their opinion about it?
Aleksandar Vučić and Ana Brnabić chased away the foreign investor who was brought in by Đilas, Tadić, Zelenović and Jeremić in 2004, and who could have brought an incredible thousand billion euros to Serbia in the following decades.
This is how the news from Thursday that Serbia "broke up" with the company Rio Tinto could read, that is, as the prime minister said - "we put an end to Rio Tinto".
Until just a few months ago, both the president and the prime minister showered the citizens with hundreds of billions of euros that should enter Serbia from the mining and processing of lithium from jadarite. The question arises: what will we do now without those massive billions?
Rio Tinto itself announced an investment of $2,4 billion, however, the president was much more generous. It was June 4, 2021, when he "explained to the people" what it was actually about. The figures he threw out on that occasion were incredible: depending on whether "only" the battery and cathode factory or the electric car factory would work in Serbia, the income would vary from 3,4 billion to "incredible, fascinating and fantastic 19,7 56 billion euros per year, and again for XNUMX years.
As he said then, "except for this last phase (car factory, prim. new), we already have everything else in our pockets". He announced that that part of Serbia could be the richest, "richer than Belgrade".
A similar calculation - of a trillion, that is, a thousand billion euros - was presented by the president on July 29. In addition to all those huge billions, he also mentioned thousands of very well-paid jobs and a turnaround in the birth rate, concluding that, if all that happens, "then it is clear to you that Serbia is on another planet in relation to today's situation".
He was still explaining to the people on December 1 that "his dream" is for Serbia to produce batteries from domestic lithium and electric cars generates 10,3 billion euros a year and thus becomes a "European miracle". He supported his claims with graphs. The address was broadcast live by national televisions RTS, Prva, Happy and Pink.
A logical question arises: with what right did Vučić and Brnabić deprive citizens of hundreds of billions of euros, which they announced themselves? Why did they willingly "break up" with Rio Tinto, despite many assurances that "the people will decide" on the lithium mine in a referendum? Why, with a discretionary decision, did they destroy the hopes of the people in Loznica and the surrounding area that they would live better?
When the Rio Tinto protests "fell out", Vučić spoke about foreign mercenaries among domestic politicians, who received money from abroad to block the jadarite mining and processing project. Is it because of the interests of foreign mercenaries that we pay one billion euros in compensation to Rio Tinto, the number that Vučić used to scare citizens? Doesn't Vučić also work for those same interests?
Of course, these are all semi-cynical questions, which put the fairy tales that Vučić and Brnabić and others told the citizens into the current context. Because it is not known what is worse: that the president's calculations of hundreds of billions of euros are correct, and that he then lightly gave them up for the sake of a few political points, because his chair is rocking, or that he deliberately misled the citizens about "trucks and planes" in order to cover up possible environmental problems (which, to make matters even crazier, have not yet been confirmed).
Likewise, promises about stopping this project are of little value. How much is the word of a man and his employees worth, who change their attitude about how the wind blows? Almost exactly three years ago, on January 23, 2019, Vučić announced that he had asked the Rio Tinto company "to continue and speed up the work, because it is of great importance for our country." Less than a month ago, on December 27, 2021, he stated that "the Jadar project will not be withdrawn even though 'some opposition politicians' requested it". And then, just three weeks later, on January 20, 2022, Brnabić announced that the Rio Tinto project had been put to an end.
Who can guarantee that after winning the elections in April 2022, the new government will not immediately return everything to the old state? Even if the story with Rio Tinto is really over, neither the fighters against lithium and all kinds of mines have much reason to be satisfied, because there are still several projects for mining lithium in Serbia, which neither they nor the government of Serbia have dealt with.
But it is only a potential environmental problem. What can we say about the enormous, confirmed polluters in the east of Serbia? Nobody seems to be interested in that.
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