Ana Brnabić: 5 years of not interfering in her work

It was March 24 and the election campaign was coming to an end. The SNS caravan led by Ana Brnabić, Prime Minister for two terms and SNS commissioner for Belgrade, met in the part of Surčin called Jakovo. Brnabić took the microphone and in about twenty seconds managed to summarize her five-year stay at the formally most powerful political office.

"I'm glad to be in Surčin today," Brnabić began, smiling. The gathered also laughed, a couple of voices corrected her, saying: "Jakovo". With an even wider smile, Brnabić made the point: "In Jarkov? Here, sorry, sorry, fine.”

This did not affect the election results - SNS will form the government both at the level of the Republic and at the level of the City of Belgrade. However, for the first time since 2012, the group of parties gathered on the SNS list does not have a majority in the republican assembly - with more than 48 percent of the votes won in 2016, they fell to below 43 percent. Also, although the City Election Commission of the City of Belgrade has not yet come out with the final results, it is certain that SNS lost a similar percentage of votes compared to the local elections in 2018: then they were at around 45 percent, after April 3rd they were slightly above 38 percent.

On the other hand, this short episode perfectly illustrates the impression Ana Brnabić left during her presidency of the Government of Serbia: she doesn't really know what she's talking about, she doesn't know the context, nor the opportunities (nor is she too interested in it), but that doesn't stop her from he expresses his ignorance with great confidence and without any sense of the responsibility that comes with the spoken word.

Ana from Jarkovo

True, after the end of the voting, there were several poisonous arrows sent from her own party, which she joined in October 2019: "Anna from Jarkovo is somewhat responsible. She is somewhat responsible for Belgrade as well. She is a trustee. These days, you journalists don't ask the question of the responsibility of Ana from Jarkovo", said a member of the Serbian Parliament and a member of the main board of SNS, Bratislav Jugović, on April 7, about who is responsible for the somewhat weaker result of SNS.

Brnabić, for her part, did not see the results of the election that way: "We understand how much more we have to work, we don't blame anyone for it, not even the tycoon media, social networks, the citizens of Belgrade, we start from us", said the Prime Minister, adding that she was satisfied " because the main goal was achieved - the historic victory of Vučić in the first round of the presidential elections".

This, therefore, was the "main goal" - to secure a place for Vučić "in history", at least as he writes and desires. Precisely this - participating in the cultivation of the cult of Vučić's personality - was an obligatory element of the "policy" led by Ana Brnabić as Prime Minister.

Those who know her, and knew her even before she entered politics, say that "careerist" is a word that perfectly describes the prime minister. They say that her eyes glazed over the possibility of becoming prime minister, "because it will look great on her CV". At the same time, they describe her as a positive, humorous person, often smiling, but without much knowledge about the context of the world in which we live.

Mandate filled with affairs

Be that as it may, there is no doubt that during her tenure as prime minister, Serbia was shaken by a whole series of affairs that, of course, were not even close to being resolved, even in cases where the immediate suspects, such as Veljko Belivuk's group, were arrested. Massive known and still unknown crimes took place during her "government" - "Krušik", "Jovanjica", plagiarized diplomas and doctorates, the "Doljevac" tollbooth, wild construction everywhere, including on the top of Kopaonik, the burning of a journalist's house, brutal the murders that have been tolerated for years... are only some of the biggest things - not to mention the huge jobs that the companies in which the husbands or brothers of the highest officials work or have worked receive from the state, including her brother Igor Brnabić.

On the other hand, the affairs that were initiated by the government itself through its tabloids remained intact - the alleged wiretapping of the president by parts of the MUP, the alleged multi-year theft through Customs of 640 million euros, the alleged participation of ministers Nebojsa Stefanović and Marija Obradović, as well as Dijana Hrkalović , in preparation for Vučić's murder...

All this was published through the regime's tabloids during 2021, only to be silenced and calmed down, like a stick hitting water: there are Nebojša Stefanović and Marija Obradović still in ministerial posts, in Brnabićka's government, while Hrkalović's role, as undoubtedly party "engaged" persons (first in the BIA, then in the MUP), minimizes, especially in connection with the crimes that are charged Belyvuk.

But these are all "invented affairs": "You are producing so many affairs, it is so much hyperinflation, that, people, you are matching your previous affair that you invented with a new affair," said Brnabić in November 2019.

Vučić as a mentor

But let's go back to the beginning - after she was seen as the head of the secret "delivery unit" which, they say, still exists, and we still don't know where the money for its operation comes from and why, Ana Brnabić was first appointed as a minister state administration and local self-government.

This happened after she sided with Vučić in the affair from 2015, when a transcript of the conversation between Bojan Pajtić, then Prime Minister of Vojvodina and leader of the Democratic Party, and Lenka Udovički, the sister of the then minister Kori Udovički, became public.

According to that transcript, Lenka Udovički accused Vučić's godfather and the then director of Elektromrež Srbija Nikola Petrović of wanting to extort the company "Continental Wind Serbia", that is, of asking for two million euros so that the company's wind farm would be connected to EMS. Petrović denied this, and Brnabićeva, then the director of the Serbian branch of the CWS company, said that everything in the construction of the wind farm was according to the law and that there were no elements of corruption. Soon after, she left the company, and in 2020, Nikola Petrović won Lidija Udovički in court, whom he sued for injury to honor and reputation.

Just as Vučić surprised the public in 2016 by appointing Ana Brnabić to the head of the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government - at the same time, unprovoked, announcing to the public the sexual orientation of the new minister - he did the same in 2017, appointing her as Prime Minister after winning the presidential election.

As the "boss" says

For her part, Ana Brnabić, even before she was appointed (not elected) to the position of Prime Minister, clearly outlined the indications of what the public can expect from her: ignorance of the Constitution and laws of the country she heads, turning her head away from every affair. in which you would find progressives, inept media performances, meaningless statements that speak of complete misunderstanding of the situation surrounding it, and unreserved admiration and adoration for the one he calls "boss".

Let's remember, back in June 2017, Brnabić declared that "Vučić should have the role of mentor over the prime minister in the first few months", without any understanding of how much of a "foul" he was committing.

Immediately afterwards, in August 2017, she agreed with one of the numerous "initiatives" of Aleksandar Vulin, this time that it would be good to start hanging pictures of President Vučić in state institutions. "I think that the cult of national symbols should continue to be strengthened, first of all in Serbia - both the coat of arms and the flag, and I think that this is something that we lacked a little in the past, so I have no problem with the president's pictures being placed in institutions, state institutions", said Brnabić at the time.

Previously, she boasted that she took the transcript of her interview with the American agency Bloomberg to the Russian ambassador Chepurin, in order to convince him that Bloomberg misinterpreted her statement that Serbia would rather choose the EU than Russia.

Then, in January 2018, together with Marko Đurić, she shed "crocodile tears" over the open grave of the murdered Oliver Ivanović, whom both Srpska lista and SNS had previously targeted for months, declaring him a traitor, an inhuman... She had a similar "tact" even after in June 2021, Jelisaveta Vasilić, a member of the Council for the Fight against Corruption, passed away - then "on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Serbia and her personal name" sent "deepest condolences to family members, co-workers and friends". Previously, in September 2020, when Jelisaveta Vasilić spoke about the fact that people were telling the Council that Andrej Vučić "is the main one in the purchase of land", Ana Brnabić addressed the same Jelisaveta Vasilić with the following words: "Woman, you are not a market seller, you are member of the Council for the fight against corruption, how do you talk without evidence, and you cannot have evidence when it is not true."

War against non-regime media

One of the areas in which the Prime Minister showed thorough and continuous ignorance of the situation (with the very likely possibility that she "acted silly" many times), is the work of the media.

The violent attacks on journalists that came either directly from the authorities or from the so-called media that are under the control of the government, pretending to be ignorant ("I don't know about government officials who insult the media" and "I'm honestly trying to understand how the lack of media freedom in Serbia manifests itself"), so that by officially joining the SNS, she herself would start exercising the SNS attitude towards the media. In February 2021, for example, she called an extraordinary press conference to announce that "N1 is lying", explaining that she had instructed eGovernment not to respond to N1's editorial staff and not to deny the news published by N1, because it would, as she explained, N1 must have put that denial in the corner of the site.

It is the same with seeing the media image in the country. In reality, the media "market" is dominated by government propagandists, who faithfully and blindly follow the Great Leader's instructions. In the version of reality that Ana Brnabić believes in, the media situation in the country is much better than in 2012, when "there were no opposition media", and "today you have a serious opposition scene and serious media, plus social networks on which 90 percent of Serbia, which you cannot control in any way".

During the state of emergency in 2020, journalist Ana Lalić was detained - another one of Brnabić's "successes" as Prime Minister. Later, Brnabić said that she was "sorry" about the detention, but essentially showed that she had no problem with this approach to the media and journalists, saying that she would "appeal for no more detentions, even for lies", in order to later repeal the regulation about the "centralization" of all information during the pandemic, but, as she said, at Vučić's request.

Previously, in 2019, together with Olivera Zekić, she "investigated" in front of the cameras Maja Pavlović, the owner of a local television station in Novi Sad, who went on hunger strike several times that year because the state did not respect its own regulations.

I don't know anything and I can't talk about it

Brnabićeva very quickly "doctored" in the SNS skill, that for everything tricky that journalists ask her about, she has a ready answer "let the competent institutions do their work": this was the case with "Krušik" ("As for Krušik, just let the competent authorities do our job. We are a government that respects independent institutions, the rule of law, we have nothing more to say about that affair."); that's how it was when Rodoljub Milović stated that Minister Zlatibor Lončar was an associate of the Zemun clan ("I will not react to the allegations of any individual, I am the President of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, I have to believe in the institutions"); this was also the case when KRIK journalists discovered that the brother of Minister Sinisa Malog was receiving gifts from the Millennium Team ("I am asking all competent authorities, the Anti-Corruption Agency, the Anti-Corruption Council within the Government of Serbia to deal with this and they give me a recommendation"). It was also recorded that she did not react when those same institutions irrefutably established that Siniša Mali had plagiarized her doctorate...

On the other hand, Brnabić has another tactic - she simply says that she doesn't know anything about that, to which she is uncomfortable giving an answer. Thus, she does not know who Aleksandar Vidojević aka Aca Rošavi is who is sitting with Danilo Vučić; she "did not hear" the statement of President Vučić, who tried to minimize the criminal offense of those arrested in the "Jovanjic" affair (that it was only a ton of marijuana, which is legalized in Germany anyway), while teaching journalist Ljubica Gojgić that it is possible that she, Lj . Gojgić, "watches a lot of these tycoon media"; when asked who bears the greatest responsibility for the theft of high school tests, she says that she "wasn't in Serbia when everything was happening"; when asked how she would comment on the verdict against Radovan Karadžić, Brnabić answered "let's wait and see what everyone else will say"; regarding the aforementioned affair, "Jovanjica" declares that "no one really knows exactly what the affair is", and on another occasion, on the remark that Vulin once visited this farm, points out that "at one time there was the Pannonian Sea there, so what exactly is that now?" so?".

The use of lies for political purposes

The third option is to simply agree: "Yesterday, the police did not throw tear gas." Therefore, all the tear gas that was thrown yesterday was thrown by the demonstrators," she said about the first day of the July protests in 2020. According to her, the SNS internet activists are volunteers who work for ideology, and the opposition has internet teams "that pay thousands and thousands of euros "; says that "the government is working to improve election conditions, not in the last month or three months, but continuously since 2016"; says that in 2012 there were no media open to the then opposition; says that Serbia "is by far the best example in the region of how war crimes should be treated"; for her, the reports of the European Commission or, for example, when the FATF (international body for combating money laundering) puts Serbia on the black list - non-objective or political decisions; he says that "when you have investors from Germany and Japan, you know that there is no corruption"; says that she does not call the opposition fascists, but that they call themselves fascists...

Of course, there is too little space here to present all the deceptions and lies of the government led by Ana Brnabić during 2020 and 2021 in connection with the corona virus epidemic - starting with lying about the number of infected and dead people, through falsification with the number of respirators, up to the still unknown conditions under which the state purchased medical equipment. However, it is worth recalling her bizarre statement about how the deaths from covid are counted (the one, "I go to Infectivna, I get hit by a bus, I die"), and her statement that she "doesn't know what 'a case of death related to the covid epidemic' means" ", as well as that he "does not believe in anti-epidemic measures".

At the beginning of her first term, Brnabić joked about herself: "No matter what they call me now (ficus, ikebana...), I would like to be called a successful and efficient Prime Minister at the end of my term," she said in July 2017.

Unfortunately for her, she is not being called as she would have liked even at the end of her second term. However, CV has become the "first league" by now.

"Time" number 1633-1634, April 21, 2022.

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