"I would like to be an angel, so I tattooed him on my right shoulder," said Nebojša Bakarec, then an official of the Democratic Party of Serbia, in April 2005, when he shocked Serbia by taking a picture of himself naked to the waist with a sword in his hands. The shock was twofold - firstly, that a politician dared to take such a step, and then that it was a politician from the DSS, whose members were considered stiff and boring by the public. Two years later, he said that he got the need to get a tattoo because he writes songs. "That angel motif was attractive to me, maybe because I would like to be an angel myself." (…) I am aware that angels do not exist, but in a symbolic sense I want to be good."
Back then, in March 2007, there would probably be a small number of people who would not have remembered at least one angelic act of Nebojsa Bakarec: in June 2005, he donated skin to an 11-year-old boy who was seriously injured in a fire - eight percent of the skin from the thighs of the then member of the executive committee of the Stari Grad Municipal Assembly was transplanted to Uroš Korović from Kraljevo. In January 2006, he repeated this heroic feat by donating the skin to a 15-year-old girl from Sombor.
"I am happy for this opportunity. I feel deep down that I justify my existence with this. I do it for special reasons, because until the age of 12 I spent two years in various hospitals and survived 15 operations during that period. That's why I'm not afraid, I'm used to it," said Bakarec after the first transplant, explaining that when he was four years old, he was in the hospital in Rovinj for a year and a half due to the lengthening of his right leg, completely alone, and that his parents visited him once a month, coming from his native Osijek (he was born in 1963).
But in the same statement from March 2007, Bakarec added: "You can't just want to be an angel, you have to do something about it." I don't live under the delusion that I'm perfect, but each of us carries both 'demonic' and 'angelic' within us. It's just a matter of what they'll let prevail."
CONSISTENT INCONSISTENCY
Today, 14 years later, it seems that the current member of the Serbian Progressive Party in the Serbian Parliament has fallen off the "angel's path", considering that he has turned into just another one of Aleksandar Vučić's many megaphones, which the president uses for "dirty verbal business".
Although he often managed to surprise the public with his statements and actions, when the line is drawn, Nebojša Bakarec can still be called a typical representative of Serbian politicians in the last twenty years. Where did this rating come from? Despite his often displayed eccentricity, an analysis of his statements in those twenty years shows that, as with most domestic politicians, they are characterized by exceptional inconsistency, depending on what the situation dictates (otherwise, as he says, after 2000 he started more to appear in the media and he realized that he liked it: "I was an introvert myself, I struggled to change that and I succeeded. I became an extrovert, even to the limit exhibitionism").
But it didn't seem like that before. For example, Bakarec refused the post of deputy twice - in 2004 and 2007. After a month of working as a deputy in 2004, the former authorized person of the entire DOS for the federal presidential elections in 2000, Nebojša Bakarec, returns the parliamentary mandate and declares that he was tired of listening to the radicals.
"I couldn't bear to sit on a wooden bench for ten hours without being allowed to read a book." Imagine, others are picking their noses, reading newspapers, and I'm not allowed to read a book! I could no longer listen to those who spend most of the congregation's time and die in the pew. I am not a passive person. Secondly, the relations in that assembly are not decent. Parliament is hard-working and efficient, but I was annoyed by insults, indecency, insults, bad relations... All this is more pronounced on the spot than through the media, some things cannot be seen or heard if you are not there", he will say in 2006.
In January 2007, he himself withdrew from the electoral list of the DSS and gave way to a member from Gnjilan, and then in the same year he declared that he was in favor of introducing special restrictions for deputies and politicians: "For example, health control of physical and mental health, because it is a big problem here, especially in the Assembly. Trust me, I've been there, I know."
However, all that changes and Bakarec is elected as a member of the SNS in June 2020. A year later, he will say that "there is no greater honor than being a member of parliament": "I am a professional politician." I am surprised by those who perceive the position of a deputy as something second-rate. Yesterday I did not leave the hall at all, I listened to the president and wrote two articles. Being a deputy is a first-class honor," he said in June 2021, when Vučić reproached some deputies for staying longer than them without leaving the assembly hall.
There were many such inconsistencies. Here are just some examples.
"Thank God, DSS chose Mr. Zoran Drakulic as the candidate for mayor. We chose a worldly, business man who invests in his country. And to Belgrade. He is a very capable, decent, educated man," Bakarec said in August 2004 before the Belgrade elections.
In June 2005, Bakarec spoke of the same Drakulic as follows: "That man is a cold, unscrupulous merchant, who thinks that money can buy the position of vice president of the DSS." Well, he can't! We don't really care what happens next with him. As it came, so it went. (...) His followers promoted him all the time as a replacement for Vojislav Koštunica. And man is a political 'tabula raza'! He has no idea about politics! Just look at his interviews where he talks about The Hague, Kosovo, the Government... What a black vice-president of the party, when he doesn't know what he's talking about!"
Or, in September 2004, the DSS presidency decides that "it will not make alliances only with extremist parties", which, as Bakarec said, as the party's informal spokesperson, are Sulejman Ugljanin's party and Čankova's League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina.
A year later, cadres from Sulejman Ugljanin's list entered the first Kostunica government. Bakarec was there to explain this: "That was more than a year ago." So, the difference is in the passage of time. At that time they were an extremist party, but they changed their method and behavior and entered into a normal activity."
NEVER...
Of course, his former assessments of current political partners are a separate story.
"It would be disastrous for Serbia if a man who irresistibly resembles the characters from the movie becomes president Marathoners run a lap of honor", Bakarec said in 2004 before the presidential elections, stating that "the undertaker's trade is the only serious life qualification of Tomislav Nikolić - we still only need a gravedigger, one Topalović, for the position of the president of the state". (The Secretary General of the Serbian Radical Party, Aleksandar Vučić, immediately reacted to this: "I publicly call on Kostunica to get out of the mouse hole, and not to send the little rat Bakarec to tell us his ideas. If that Bakarec looks like anyone, then it is that rat Gonzo from the series The Muppet Show").
"Bogoljub Karić is a man who is proud of being uneducated, a simple primitive, and that is not an insult but a fact, so that comparison is extremely inappropriate. He was a minister in the government of Mirko Marjanović, and he should kiss the feet of Slobodan Milošević for gaining what he has in those ten years, to the detriment of all of us," Bakarec said in February 2006, and in December 2008 he stated that "PUPS is a political anomaly, like the party of Bogoljub Karić, so that it will disappear from the political scene in the same way".
However, Bakarec's statements about Aleksandar Vučić are the most disproportional. After DSS held the post of Prime Minister for two terms (2004-2007 and 2007-2008), the party went into opposition after the "historic reconciliation" of DS and SPS in 2008. In that year, the Serbian Radical Party splits, the SNS is created, and in the following period the opposition of the time continues to gather: at the DSS party celebration (Djurđevdan) in 2010, the DSS, the SNS and Velimir Ilić's New Serbia jointly demand early elections.
However, after the 2012 elections, DSS remains in the opposition. Bakarec has been writing articles against DS and Đilas as mayor of Belgrade for a long time, as well as against SNS.
"It turned out to be a freak regime, a pure, merciless and ruthless struggle for power and authority, and not concern for the people and Serbia." The rot and monstrosity of the regime can no longer be hidden. Vučić and Nikolić decided to fulfill what Washington and Brussels created them for - to betray Kosovo and Metohija, and for Serbia to swallow the betrayal without any problems - as their salvation. (…) As for me, I refuse to be Winston Smith and love Big Brother, the great Master. I refuse to wear glasses all the time, I refuse to read Max Weber, I refuse to get serious, to close my fingers and speak slowly, my eyes fixed on the bright future. I fought and will fight against every personality cult, whether it was called Zoran Đinđić or Aleksandar Vučić." (August 2013)
"It's about an inflated ego, a messianic psychosis, a belief in one's own superhuman abilities, in some kind of holy mission." At the same time, we remember Aleksandar Vučić, General Secretary of the SRS, demagogue, brash noisemaker, primitive chauvinist, Seselj's apologist. (...) The courtship with which they shower him in public has long been disgusting. We will repeat the claim that a personality cult is being created, which is starting to significantly outgrow the last relevant one, the cult of Slobodan Milosevic. There is an important difference - Vučić also has the undivided support of the West, the media and a large part of the opposition. Since it was an unfinished personality, it is quite clear that the rise to the sky of popularity and, above all, the unsuspected power and authority in the last year, further influenced the unhealthy growth of Aleksandar Vučić's ego. He found himself in the position of a child or some other immature person who, like in a fantasy movie, was given the possibilities - tools and weapons to live out his phantasms. (…) It is about a man who is a complete dilettante, who is completely incompetent for the functions he performs. It is about a man who has proven that in the first 19 years of his career. The problem is that very few people see (or publicly express) the obvious fact that the emperor is gone, that the Trojan emperor has goat ears." (September 2013)
During February 2014, Bakarec very precisely stated all the shortcomings of the "Belgrade on the Water" project, accusing the government of corruption, disrespect for the Constitution and the law: "It is obvious that acting according to the Laws takes much more time than it takes to implement populist policies, so it is the government (Vučić) decided to simply and arrogantly, in its characteristic manner, skip all that and to take steps of "seven miles" to achieve the best possible election result, counting on the empty pockets and short wits of the residents of Belgrade", writes Bakarec, for some reason introducing himself as a "civil engineer". By the way, the media has been saying for years that Bakarec studied architecture, but did not finish it, and that he later worked as a designer.
However, in the extraordinary elections of 2014, the DSS remained outside the parliament, Vojislav Koštunica retired from politics, and in mid-2015, the disintegration of this party began - first, Andreja Mladenović was excluded. "We will not leave the DSS, they can kick us out, that's the only way, Mladenović is not the only one who was kicked out, and we will not become members of the SNS, nor any other party," said Bakarec in July, only to be kicked out later. In October of the same year, the "Independent DSS" was founded with Mladenović at the head, and Bakarec was also a member - both are now members of the SNS.
Despite the assessment that Bakarec is, after all, a typical politician, there is a part of his life that he constantly brought to the public - his love life, which cannot be said for other politicians.
Bakarec very often talked about looking for the right woman, that he found her, that he was alone again, that he was looking for a partner on the Internet, that he went on "speed-dating", that he wrote songs for women...
"Now I take more care of myself, first of all my psyche, but also my body because it is inseparable. I am 41 years old and I am not young anymore. However, I have not changed as a person and I am sorry that women did not perceive me in the past ten years as they do now. That's why I sometimes wonder where you were then, I was the same," he said in 2004.
Here are just some of Nebojsa Bakarec's numerous statements on this topic:
"I took the search for a person very seriously." You can't sit between four walls and yearn. I stuck to the catchphrase: meet a thousand, hug a hundred, kiss ten and love one."
"All the time I tried to find someone who would suit me. I went out, met different women. I have a lot of years and experience, I read a lot of books on psychology and psychiatry, I can see through people. Our faces and bodies say who we are. In just 30 seconds I know that the person standing in front of me is not for me."
"But I would emphasize this - love for women." They feel it and I try to be a male geisha, especially for the woman I'm in a relationship with. It will happen again when I find my feminine grail.''
"I have been writing for 19 years. Women are my inspiration. I didn't decide it that way. I don't need to be in a relationship with someone, to be in love with someone, a look, a touch, a smile is enough for a song, I don't need much."
... And the US
Bakarec moved to SNS in October 2017: "I'm not a fly-by-night." Two and a half years ago, I was expelled from DSS without any explanation even though I am the founder of the party. Considering that as a member of the DSS, I fought against the DS for a long time, which is the reason for the creation of my former party, it is natural for me to side with the progressives, who are also fighting against the DS," he said on that occasion.
What he starts to say after that, especially in the last two years, is no longer worth quoting in the decent press. In short, he accuses the opposition of planning the murder of Aleksandar Vučić, calls individual opposition members drug addicts, criminals, savages, thieves, accuses them of deliberately spreading the covid infection... After the arrest of Veljko Belivuk's group in February of this year, Bakarec claims that the opposition, i.e. Đilas, the head of the financier of the preparation of Vučić's murder and the head of the political wing of the mafia and terror, calls part of the opposition terrorists, explains that conspiracies in Russia are solved "by leaving you no more". Among the last bizarre things he did was clumsily photoshopping first the picture of Veljko Belivuk with Marinika Tepić, and then Dragan Đilas and Dobrica Veselinović into a picture of flames, accusing them of causing the fire at the landfill in Vinča...
From the writer of love songs, he ends by speaking the following lines in the Assembly: "One ring to rule over all, one to reach for all, one ring to gather all in the darkness fresh." In the land of Mordor where the shadows last, we will not allow Sauron Djilas to turn Serbia into Mordor. We will defeat the mafia, we will defend Vučić and Serbia."
But there is an explanation for why it does what it does. In 2005, after taking a picture of himself holding a sword, he explained himself: "Everything I do, I do for the benefit of the party, not for personal interest." Obviously, the current party is asking him for this, and he is successfully fulfilling the demands.
