Being on the public stage doesn't mean just showing off on it, but also staying on it when it's no longer pleasant or profitable. On the contrary. Today, being on the public stage, and offering permanent resistance to the regime of Aleksandar Vučić, is only fraught with trouble. Željko Hubač, however, does not give up. He is one of the most active figures from the world of culture who does not stop advocating for civilizational values that the regime lustfully destroys. In an interview with Vreme, Hubač talks about the severely damaged Vučić regime, recalls the regime's innumerable inactions against citizens, society and the state, about the student movement, opposition parties, and about an opportunity that should not be missed.
WEATHER"Inform" published the alleged student list. Can it be said that the regime is playing chess with the students? What is the situation on the board??
ŽELJKO HUBAČ: Chess is a serious game in order to use it as a metaphor for this attempt at a banal and doomed political showdown by Vučić and his clientelistic oligarchy with the young people who represent the future of this country. They dared to call the government to account for the death of 16 people who lost their lives under tons of concrete canopy at the railway station in Novi Sad. In that conflict, the government killed all the threads of reason to such an extent that, perceiving them exclusively as political opponents, it called the Serbian youth Ustasha, blockaders, terrorists, little people, traitors, foreign mercenaries and agents, thugs, murderers... Using the police and criminals, today's "owners of power" in Serbia beat their children on the streets, even minor ones, persecuted them, arrested them as political prisoners, brought them to jails father's funeral, tied them to a hospital bed, shot at them with a sonic weapon that they themselves called a sonic cannon on their obscure media, and then threatened them, those citizens of theirs who were fleeing from danger down the street, to accuse them of subverting the constitutional order simply because they trust their own senses more than enslaved TV channels with a national frequency. To top it all off, Vučić personally called them Taliban and Khmer Rouge!
Young people it, actually, facing reality...
They, all the while suffering violence and outrageous accusations, persistently confronted him with the reality that he tries to obscure with his hours-long soliloquies in the media. Judging by the political ratings, he is no longer able to do that, because conscious citizens today encounter examples of corruption at every step. Those in Beška see that during the adaptation of the House of Culture, among other tender theft, a toilet brush was paid 300 euros, those in Leskovac see that the municipal government paid 50,000 euros for a miniature fountain, those in Bački Petrovac see that a million euros were paid for 790 meters of road in the industrial zone, those in Šumadija see that the price of the Moravian Corridor has increased from 750 million to two billion euros, those in Užice inhale smoke from a burning landfill, those in Zaječar see the so-called a medical desert in the middle of which there is one gynecologist for every 8000 women, they in Niš see that another man on the SNS list was convicted for abuse of official position, and a former hunger strike leader is in prison, they in Novi Sad see that one of the so-called a smart bench in the park near Spence charged more than 50,000 euros of their money, they see a renovated railway station next to the high-speed railway to Subotica, but not opened due to insecurity... And I won't go on. If you really insist on using chess vocabulary, it is common knowledge that in that game it is necessary to sacrifice a piece in order to win the game in the end. Vučić decided to sacrifice his own citizens for the sake of staying in power, in the manner of Ibijev, but he realized that his assessment was wrong and now, like a groggy boxer cornered, he reflexively waves his hands in front of him, swinging below the belt, all in the hope of delaying the knockout until he finds a way to escape from the ring. What Selimović said, man is not what he thinks, but what he does.
Is the regime counting on the passage of time to try to change its bad image?
I am sure that time is not working for this government because their ship is drilled in a hundred places and every day new holes are opened, and they only have one plug, Vučić. People who are his immediate collaborators, such as Ana Brnabić who, among other things, declared that "Christ was born on February 14", Petrov who does not distinguish between polenta and palette, Mrdić who sat in a tent with the criminal Sandokan on hunger strike, Macut who eats lunch at the scene of the murder before the investigation, or those "telepronters", "airplanes", doctorate forgers and all others, in relation to the diameter of the mentioned holes, have the capacity of a pin. I see that time is working for students who, with their persistence and intelligence, hard work in the field, and communication with citizens, are attracting an increasing number of undecided voters every day. Also, in my opinion, in a strange way, time is working for the opposition parties, which are realizing more and more clearly that their political future depends on their willingness to overcome vanity and unite. Time, unfortunately, does not work for Serbia, which is sinking more and more into chaos due to incompetent loyalists from the third echelon who are the only remaining personnel resource of the government.
The situation in society is, therefore, unsustainable?
Vučić is aware of the situation in society, it is clear to him that it is unsustainable, that he is no longer able to manage the country effectively with the people at his disposal and who create affairs for him every day, and he is forced to play a gambling move - to call elections. He is not happy about that, that is why he constantly changes his rhetoric, sometimes he is ready for dialogue, and sometimes he pours out volleys of insults, sometimes he is a sworn European, and sometimes he is the staunchest Russophile, he tries to ingratiate himself with the Trump administration, and he sends Bratina to Tehran for the funeral of the Ayatollah and cooperates with the Communist Party of China... This, you know, is the kind of political schizophrenia that, even in this world order based on unprincipledness, is doomed to failure.
It is up to us to do our best in the coming period, with the memory and energy emanating from all those young people, who are constantly under the greatest pressure, not to allow the inevitable ruin of Vučić's freakish clientelistic-oligarchic policy to be the ruin of the country we live in, in which we would like our children and grandchildren to live.
photo: marija janković...
The regime did not call elections., but it is heavily in the campaign. What do you think of these tents under which the free folk festival takes place??
With the experience of growing up in a small town, as someone who spends more than a month a year in the countryside, I responsibly claim that with that campaign, Vučić underestimated even those people he considers his safe voters. Many people enjoy it when politicians rise up to them - which is the fun under the tents, drinking together, singing, etc. - but most of them know very well how to judge the sincerity of those "revelers". Where were those stars of the fair tents - hosted by the people paying with their money - when fires raged and swallowed the houses of ordinary people while tankers were on duty in front of the homes of selected local chiefs, where were they when there was no electricity for weeks due to a little more snow and while their meat stocks in freezers were melting, where were they when there was no water during the drought, where are they today when the African plague darkens their pig farms, where are they when they need to be compensated for the difference between production and purchase prices of agricultural products, when they have to pay back loans, why their children from the village go to the town and work there for more than a decade on fixed-term contracts or with temporary-occasional contracts, why mining corporations dig their ambitions near the village and forcefully buy out their heritage, why drugs appeared in their environments and what does it have to do with the fact that Gašić's gherkin producer and sponsor of SNS stores tons of marijuana in their village, and Vulin digs organic tomatoes in Jovanjica while in Liberia seizes drugs with the flag of Serbia on the packages...?
When you bring people with those accumulated questions in their heads, which tear them apart, to a party party, it's a matter of time when they will ask them publicly. Our people can endure injustice for a long time in silence, but this government is provoking this suffering to such an extent with its arrogance that I am convinced that it is on the verge of bursting.
Do you believe Vučić when he says that he will accept the election results if he loses? If he loses, and does not acknowledge the results, how a rebellious society should react?
A convincing victory in the elections, which in our proportional system is a difference of ten percent in favor of the anti-regime bloc, guarantees a peaceful handover of power. All in-depth surveys of public opinion indicate that about 60 percent of respondents believe that Serbia is going in the wrong direction, and that about 70 percent of people trust the University. It is a good starting point that, with a quality election campaign and smart profiling of the anti-regime bloc in no more than three columns, can lead to the desired scenario. For thirty years now, we have been experiencing changes in government according to the popular "Kurta dismounts, Murta mounts". These elections should differ from the previous ones, first of all, in that the majority of those who will be on the student list are not thinking about their own political future, but about the future of all our children. If these people had a utilitarian-political consciousness, they would not be on the Student List. In this regard, I am convinced that their decision to enter this dirty political arena is clearly limited by goals and time. The goal is the normalization of the country through very specific moves that should include steps towards professionalization and strengthening of society's institutions, i.e. respect for the law, an independent judiciary, independent and professional media, lustration, examination of the origin of assets and money flows and, what is also very important in my opinion, the creation of a society in which one's political orientation must not influence professional engagement. The government of experts, which I expect after these elections, in my opinion should be fixed for a certain period, and after that period its members should return to their professions in which they established themselves through work and knowledge, not by party affiliation. I am convinced that if the principles of the pre-election campaign are set according to those principles, if the public is offered a concrete plan for solving those problems for each of the numerous problems of society, that the majority of Serbian citizens will understand that we have a chance to live in a prosperous country that will strive for development through democratic processes, the consistent application of laws that would be equal for everyone and that would have the strength to resist the autocratic intentions of individuals.
All of us at this moment are faced with a simple decision that will decisively affect the fate of our descendants - the state or the mafia.
Therefore, it seems to you that Vučić's organization is seriously damaged? How the opposition reacts to that circumstance?
Yes, that speaks the language of facts. Well, he announced for Vidovdan that it would be the most massive three-day gathering in the history of Serbia, and he gathered a little more than thirty thousand people in front of the Assembly in a period of one hour. There is no commissioner of the SNS in Serbia who today can even approximately achieve the set quota of rally participants, as evidenced by the "cutting down of princes" on local committees. As for intra-party frictions, they are currently visible in the ranks of the SNS, in Niš, Kraljevo, Zaječar, Kragujevac, Užice, Čačak, and above all in Belgrade, where Mayor Šapić, who is also the vice-president of the SNS, publicly argues with the "rats" in his own ranks who, as he says, are working on his head for petty personal interests. And as for the opposition, no matter how strange it may sound to you, the students' decision not to form pre-election coalitions with political parties naturally forces both the pro-European bloc and the right to consolidate, because all research at the moment tells them that going to the polls individually makes it impossible for them to pass the census. In the pro-European bloc, that consolidation process has already begun, there are certain disagreements on the right, but I believe that that bloc will also understand this specific political moment and will not fall for another political maneuver "ala Milica zavetnica".
Where are culture and art today, and specifically, in your case, what prevails in the National Theater today apathy or hope?
The vast majority of artists in Serbia are united in their view that this government, embodied in the current Minister of Culture, is committing a crime against contemporary creativity. But that unity is not the result of some democratic processes in the mentioned community, but rather the arrogance of the government, which does not announce competitions, trying to discipline artists with various semi-Stalinist methods and a personnel policy that is on the verge of absurdity and which has brought most artists to the brink of existence. The artists united because of the feeling of humiliation and hopelessness.
As for the theater, it has been dealing with personnel problems, infrastructure, and especially production financing for many years, so the last two years have unfortunately only exposed the real situation. I don't know what the next step is if theaters in Serbia have an average of two premieres a year? Maybe a shutdown? The statement of Ljubiša Ristić, who justified his appointment as acting director of Atelje 212 by the need to save the theater, sounds extremely symptomatic to me. What if that theater won this year at the most significant domestic festival, Steria's Theatre? Maybe Ristić knows something that we don't, or it sounds impossible to us, and he is following up on Vladimir Đukanović's statement that all theaters should be privatized. If all this sounds like a product of my paranoia, ask yourself what we said about the appointment of Dragoslav Bokan to the head of the Board of Directors of the National Theater a little over a year ago, where is he today and how does he influence the creation of the repertoire, and where is the rebellion in the National Theater? When I said that Bokan is a demonstrative exercise and that, if the entire theater community does not react decisively and in solidarity to his appointment, every theater will get its own Bokan in the future, many told me that I was exaggerating. I wish I wasn't right, but the reality is harsh because every cultural institution in Serbia is slowly getting its own subordinate whose task is to stifle contemporary production, and one should not be too wise to assume where this bocanzation of culture leads and what kind of cultural model this government offers us in the future.
