The last day of June 2020 was sunny but dark. The terrible truth about the fact that the number of people infected and died from the corona virus in Serbia was hidden from the public in order to hold parliamentary elections. One city, in fact, the largest city in Sandžak, Novi Pazar, suffered in particular. The exact number of infected and deceased is not known even today, but it is known that the health care system in this city collapsed under the onslaught of a large number of infected. At that moment, the whole world is just at the beginning of the pandemic, even though it doesn't know it yet. A vaccine, as well as new drugs, do not yet exist. Novi Pazar is the epicenter of the pandemic and the situation is significantly worse than in the rest of Serbia. The reason for this, to the greatest extent, is the lack of capacity in the health system.
On June 30, 2020, the Prime Minister of Serbia, Ana Brnabić, is coming to Pazar under the burden of the situation. Until then, she was mostly known as a puppet, but still a calm politician, ready for (even fictitious) dialogue. Her visit to Novi Pazar was part of an established scheme between her and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić: he was brisk and nervous, she calm and rational. That day, in the bright sun, surrounded by a crowd that was not enthusiastic about her arrival, Ana Brnabić underwent a transformation and took on her final form.
RADICAL TRANSFORMATION
A part of the doctors and medical staff of the General Hospital in Novi Pazar briefly turned their backs on Ana Brnabić and the then Minister of Health Zlatibor Lončar as a sign of protest. All the time during the address of the minister and the prime minister, the citizens gathered in front of the city hospital, several dozen of them, whistled and shouted "resignation", "thieves", "where have you been until now"...
"I will not be afraid because I am not here because of them... They can threaten me, try to break through the cordon, kill me, but they will not change the truth", said Ana Brnabić and added: "We were not afraid that twenty people came here to insult , threatens, mentions our children and we will not be afraid because we are doing our job".
No one mentioned their children. From Ana Brnabić, Vučić just finally spoke, the one who constantly begs to be touched by his family and children.
Standing in front of the doctors who for weeks were barely coping with the number of patients, standing in front of the families of the deceased, Ana Brnabić accused them all of - politicization. She asked the doctors who saw what was happening with their own eyes, the families who lost their loved ones, to stop disinformation.
A classic Vučić move: trust him, that is. her, not with his eyes.
BRUTAL ANA
So, in the summer of 2020, Ana Brnabić finally let her guard down and stopped pretending that she was always ready for dialogue and compromise. These days, after the information that she was seen as the president of the parliament, Vučić spoke highly of Ana Brnabić, pointing out that she is the biggest surprise in Serbian politics for him and that she has learned a lot: "Ana Brnabić is my most positive surprise, she has made the most progress, so fought strongly and bravely".
And Ana fought for him the most on social networks, especially on Twitter, where she hunts "brutal lies" almost every day against the President of Serbia and the Serbian Progressive Party. What the current Prime Minister of Serbia writes there, the language and expressions she uses, are so unworthy of her position, that just because of the fact that she expresses herself that way, even in public, one does not ask if this is really what she is writing. On Twitter, the Prime Minister, apart from the opposition, regularly deals with independent media (almost exclusively those that are part of the United group - Danas, Nova, N1), civil society organizations (CRTA, Civic Initiatives) and representatives of these organizations (Raša Nedeljkov, Maja Stojanović ).
She attacked the Prime Minister on Twitter and the OSCE, and anyone who is active on that network knows that sometimes an unusual, mostly hostile dynamic develops between two Twitter users that lasts indefinitely, and they weigh each other's every word, call each other names and argue. Anna chose Michael Roth, the president of the German Bundestag Committee on Foreign Affairs, as her sparring partner.
In the last issue of "Vremena" we reported a part of this saga related to election irregularities in Serbia, but the story has a continuation: Roth exchanged several tweets with the controversial political figure Nikola Sandulović, the Prime Minister of Serbia "intercepted" this communication and hurried to pass it on. to his followers.
However, it was not her strangest moment on social networks, nor the most embarrassing. Such a moment took place in May, immediately after two mass murders in Serbia, when protests began under the name "Serbia against violence". Everything happened on May 12, at a time when the protests were extremely well attended, but someone planted a photograph of the protest against the opposition, on which citizens were added with Photoshop to make it look even more massive. The opposition leaders who shared this picture removed it and apologized.
However, Ana Brnabić, Aleksandar Vučić and Finance Minister Siniša Mali were together in a restaurant during the protest where they took pictures. Then, with the help of an Instagram filter, they multiplied their faces, and Brnabić posted the picture on Twitter and wrote that there were more and more of them and that they were soon going to Gazela (the demonstrators went to the Gazela bridge that evening).
At the moment when the Prime Minister hangs that picture of the three of them with wide smiles on their faces and makes jokes about people protesting against violence, not even ten days have passed since two mass murders, seventeen people died in those murders, and in the previous seven days there were three femicides.
Nothing was really funny, there was no room or opportunity even for a smile. However, the President of Serbia, the Prime Minister of Serbia and the Minister of Finance in the Government of Serbia did not share the feelings of the majority of citizens, and especially not the feelings of the families of the victims. They were sitting in a cafe, taking pictures and making fun of the whole society, which at that moment was completely traumatized by everything that had happened. Let's recall that in those days, Ana Brnabić was the person who declared that "the system did not fail" in cases of mass murders.
And yes, Vučić and Mali are also in that creepy picture, but only Ana Brnabić thought it was appropriate to post that picture on Twitter and tell all the citizens of Serbia to laugh in their faces. Well, that was really brutal, unlike all other phenomena that the Prime Minister often describes with this adjective.
CAN SHE REALLY BE IN THE ASSEMBLY
Aleksandar Vučić's best student is now rumored to be the future president of the National Assembly. However, Law Faculty professor Tanasije Marinković said in the Studio N1 Live show that "we can get into situations of potential constitutional crises".
Namely, he explained that Ana Brnabić cannot be a candidate, much less be elected president of the National Assembly, because there are constitutional obstacles to that. As he explained, Article 126 of the Constitution of Serbia clearly stipulates that a member of the Government cannot be a deputy at the same time: "All the more, the prime minister cannot be a deputy at the same time, even less can she be the president of the Assembly." She would have to resign as a member of parliament immediately", said Marinković and reminded that Ana Brnabić did so in 2022.
"If he resigns, he will remain in that position until the election of a new president of the Government of Serbia." Those are our rules. If she does not resign from her position as a member of parliament and is elected, it will represent not only a violation of the Constitution, but also a potential constitutional crisis", said Tanasije Marinković and added that this is probably the reason for the postponement of the constitutive session of the parliament, which was scheduled for Monday 11 March.
On this occasion, the Minister of Justice of Serbia, Maja Popović, sent a written statement to the media in which she says that there is no constitutional obstacle to Ana Brnabić being nominated and elected as the President of the National Assembly and that those who claim the opposite are "malicious": "I am obliged to I react and clarify to the public that such claims are not only untrue, but also extremely malicious. Namely, Professor Marinković, referring to Article 126 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, asserts that Ana Brnabić, as Prime Minister, cannot simultaneously be a Member of Parliament, much less President of the National Assembly, and that she would have to immediately resign from the position of Member of Parliament. . This bizarre interpretation of Article 126 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia directly threatens the constitutionally guaranteed right of every citizen of the Republic of Serbia of legal age to be elected as a member of parliament.
Professor Marinković, knowingly or unknowingly, ignores the fact that the Government of the Republic of Serbia, which is currently headed by Ana Brnabić, ended its mandate after the dissolution of the National Assembly on November 1, 2023, as prescribed by Article 128 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, and that from from that moment, until the election of the new Government, that Government in the so-called "technical mandate", during which he can only perform tasks specified by law, as prescribed by Article 128, paragraph 4 of the Constitution. Therefore, it is indisputable that a member of the Government who is in a regular, full mandate cannot simultaneously perform the function of a member of parliament, which is not the case with Ana Brnabić, who, as I mentioned, is currently managing the work of the Government whose mandate has ended. It is incredible that in this matter too I have to point to examples from the practice of some previous authorities, which were not disputed from a legal point of view, but, well, they are being forgotten on this occasion as well. That's why I use the opportunity to remind you that Mirko Cvetković was elected as a member of parliament in 2012, which was not hindered by the fact that at that time he held the office of Prime Minister, whose mandate ended with the constitution of the newly elected convocation of the National Assembly", stated the Minister of Justice in written statement.
The question is, however, why the legal opinion is given by the minister personally and not by the expert services of the Ministry of Justice, and the answer is: that the answer could be passive-aggressive. It is not impossible, but it is really difficult to sneak aggression through the bureaucratic language used to write professional opinions. This is "better": clarifying the law, insulting Professor Tanasi Marinković and reminding what the "yellows" did (as if it really still matters). What Ana Brnabić would say: brutal.
SEE YOU IN THE HALL
There is every chance that in the future we will see Ana Brnabić in the broadcasts of the sessions of the National Assembly instead of Vladimir Orlić. What kind of president will she be? Brutal? Certainly, he will not lag behind Orlić in harassing opposition MPs, interrupting, interrupting and commenting on their statements while the time for them to speak is still running.
In the end, it was no accident that Vučić decided to transfer her from the post of Prime Minister to the Serbian Parliament: there he needs someone most similar to him. He certainly keeps the government in submission, so literally anyone can fill the position of prime minister. But Vučić knows very well that, after a lot of evidence that the elections were full of irregularities, the opposition will be more combative than ever and that the parliament in this convocation will be a verbal battlefield. Even if the opposition does not want it, the progressives will create an atmosphere in which the parliamentary atmosphere will constantly be on the verge of an incident. That is why he created Ana Brnabić, a young technocrat who started her political career in the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government, as her own doppelgänger, her best student, who can and wants to ruthlessly and brutally deal with political dissidents. Just to solve these technicalities about the Constitution and there it is in the hall. This time for good.
