His brother came often, almost every second or third day, and it was said that until a year or so ago, the president of Serbia often stopped by Novi Sad to visit friends and associates, check how "our thing" was progressing, have a snack from the Hungarian-Balkan fusion cuisine and try the occasional glass of expensive Fruško Gora wine. Andrej had a concrete job, he was assigned the management of this city and its surroundings - he is the duke of Novi Sad and almost all of Vojvodina. Under him was Count Zvonko Veselinović, and only then the former mayor of Novi Sad Miloš Vučević and the rest of the group. As much as he is now the president of the SNS, Vucevic was the first man from another city in the country back then. In other words, this is still the question today.
Andrej Vučić appeared in Novi Sad in full format already in 2012. And since then, he practically does not come out of it. Let us recall that after the local elections of that year, the Democratic Party and its partners formed the government in this city. After that, the famous "assimilation" followed, and the city government was aligned with that of Vučić. In order to do this in Novi Sad, a little violence, threats and blackmail were needed, so Andrej arrived in the city with a group of ruffians with a short haircut and dressed in black, with all jeeps and light weapons on their belts. They kept the heavier ones in the trunk. They soon convinced many councilors that they needed to support the new big boss.
Vučević, Vučić's friend from childhood (their parents were friends, it's no secret), and a man completely unknown to the people of Novi Sad, although he had a father who was a high-ranking official of the Serbian Radical Party, was pulled out of a drawer for mayor. Some say that it was estimated that Miloš could be a good choice because he did not protest while the young Vučićs were beating his nails. But it can only be an unsalted joke.
NOVI SAD - AN IMPORTANT CITY FOR PROGRESSIVES
Novi Sad is very important for SNS. Not like Serbian Athens, they are hurting for science, education and enlightenment. It cannot be said, they correctly estimated that this city can be a progressive "golden hen", and that good and promising money can be extracted from it for party and personal buggers. He had to be kept tight, under strict control. Almost all political and criminal clans have been put in the function of the party, there are no conflicts and problems, there is only one boss. Those "fierce guys" who were not satisfied with the redistribution of the loot were asked to take shelter - some found refuge in this world, and some in the next. The rest got lucrative jobs, and by God, the opportunity to put their ethical and aesthetic views into practice. It is not far from the truth of the joke that Zvonko Veselinović and his team, with the professional support of his brother Andrej, (was) the chief urban planner of Novi Sad.
The results of ethical and aesthetic drives, combined with oneiric greed, destroyed Novi Sad much more than NATO aviation. This once comfortable city, which somehow managed to survive the nineties and the very unpleasant first transitional years, now practically no longer exists. It was captured and overwhelmed by crime, violence, disastrous decisions, turned into an overcrowded and overpriced kasaba. It became a city of incredible impossibilities.
The Vučićs supposedly felt better and safer in Novi Sad than in their hometown. Aleksandar came to supervise the works, but also to see dear people. He really liked to visit his long-time political partner, a jocular Novi Sad politician from the other side of the river, who has now – let's believe it – disguised himself as his opponent. Like many other civil politicians, he used Vučić to attack the opposition from the left. And it was, it cannot be said that it was not, a successful strategy. Anyone who raised his head was slapped from all sides. In Novi Sad and the whole country. The regime's classic arsenal claimed that it was foreign traitors paid from the West and intergalactic funds filled by conspirators against Serbia, and that Moscow was behind them. Do you know something from today's times?
NOVI SAD HAS CHANGED
For many years, the capital of Vojvodina was demobilized. Some were afraid, some were well settled: as a journalist, you could not easily find an interlocutor who would publicly criticize the situation in the city and the country. Then negative selection took its toll. Much earlier than elsewhere in Serbia, loyalists began to be replaced by super-loyalists here. Read, expert or at least somewhat expert people loyal to the authorities were replaced by various bastards who fear neither God nor the law, only the Vučić brothers. They declared expertise to be the enemy. By doing so, and because they removed loyal coalition partners from the city government, the progressives created a large number of more or less influential enemies over time.
At the same time, the citizens of Novi Sad began to become convinced, on a personal level, year after year, that the city is ruled by bandits, and that nothing in it works if it is not in the function of generating extra profits. It has become more than visible what consequences urban progressive expertise has left with a shovel. The anger grew, but it was not articulated for a long time, it all ended in minor political and civil actions.
And then came the fall of the canopy. No one in the least reasonable had any doubts, at the very moment when the terrible news was announced, what was behind the accident. What the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime has established, at least to some extent. The canopy became a kind of boil that exploded, a heaven-clattering indication that thievery and incompetence were becoming life-threatening. Novi Sad turned from a silent city into a bastion of resistance. Not only him, but he certainly led the way.
IT'S HARD FOR ALEXANDER
And it has become the city that the president of the country is so afraid of. He practically admitted his fear. He sat at the Munich Security Conference, listened to the lectures and said to his colleagues - oh, people, I'm afraid! Then he gathered the journalists who follow him wherever he goes and announced that he will not come to Novi Sad on Monday, February 16, although it was announced that he would speak at the SNP that day, at the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of Matica Srpska. He said that he is not interested in getting beaten, because students and citizens-beaters have announced a protest due to his arrival in the capital of Vojvodina.
Joking aside, Vučić knows very well that he would not be beaten. Those who beat are on his side, we have seen it very well many times, including on Monday, when students and citizens gathered for a protest despite the president's withdrawal. When you watch videos of violence against citizens and journalists on the streets of Novi Sad - you can only wonder if there are anyone in prisons and other closed-type insistences or if they were all released into the street to defend SNS, Vučić and the mega-threatened Serbia.
The fact that Vučić is afraid of coming to Novi Sad is not a security issue but a political issue. He obviously knows that his arrival would cause a strong revolt of the people of Novi Sad and that too many people would gather on the street to expose his weaknesses and those of the progressives.
But fear as such should not be eliminated, of course. It is almost a commonplace that totalitarian rulers, who are propagandistically presented as great heroes like Hercules (not Poirot), are actually quite scary individuals - the Iraqi Achilles Saddam Hussein was found hidden in a shaft. The principle is always the same: there is constant talk about the strength, determination and courage of the leader, who himself insists on personal heroism, he is the defender of the nation whom everyone wants to kill, wound or beat, and at the same time countless models of the praetorian building are being developed. They are surrounded by dozens of layers of super loyalists. This is neither the time nor the place to recall that many such rulers suffered precisely at the hands of the praetorian.
LIVE HIGH
Many times since the fall of the canopy, Vučić has announced that he will triumphantly come to Novi Sad, where, as he announced, the largest progressive gathering will be held ever. It is unusual how a person can know that the "biggest" meeting will be organized if people come to it spontaneously. Maybe he can only know if he invests a lot of money in it and hires almost all the buses and vans of Serbia. We can assume that it is not only Vučić who is afraid of Novi Sad, but also his followers, given that there is not much interest in visiting this city among progressive tourists. Allegedly, some red ones were offered more, but nothing. Perhaps this is the answer to the question of why the "biggest" gathering never happened.
Vučić, admittedly, appeared in Novi Sad on November 5, when the first major civil protest took place after the fall of the canopy. The goal was to show courage, so he came unannounced in front of the party office surrounded by media and gave some kind of speech. Let's remember that the city hall was half full that day, which is an old progressive trick. Progressive criminals smashed the city hall to portray the protesters as thugs. The larger plan was to use this violence as spin to cover the tragedy at the train station. It didn't work.
Let's also remember that last year it was announced that a large progressive gathering on Sretenje would be held in Novi Sad, but it was moved to the safer and less combative Sremska Mitrovica. The gathering served as a framework for the then regime's propaganda bullshit, according to which the citizens' rebellion actually hides the intention to secede Vojvodina from Serbia. Then Vučić also talked about his book, in which he will tell how he suppressed the "colored revolution". The secession of Vojvodina did not happen, nor did Vučić write a book.
The only thing that happened was that he announced to the entire population that courage is not an illusion. He risked his life and ate an index sandwich across from the Novi Sad Fair, where he opened - without any announcement - the so-called Homeland fair. Surrounded by people who were left without a homeland precisely because of his and his political fathers' policies. That part of the city was blocked off, and loyal progressive activists played pranks on passers-by. This trick didn't really work for him. He also hung around Novi Sad back then, but that wasn't a very skillful political maneuver either.
"When Mickey says he's afraid/ he's serious/ he has a phobia of earthquakes/ he lives high", that's how the famous song by Johnny Štulic begins.
