There is no agreement with SNS

According to public opinion surveys on the topic of the Belgrade elections, the success of the group of citizens gathered around Aleksandar Šapić, the current president of the municipality of New Belgrade, was declared a "shock" or at least a "surprise" from the beginning. In the reports on the initial ratings, Šapić as mayor occupied the first place below the convincingly leading SNS, but after the candidacy of Dragan Đilas, he moved to the place behind him. Seeing in this the always grateful position of "the balance on the scale", the public looked for the slightest sign of political orientation in every word of Šapić, on one side or the other, towards the government or the opposition. He himself, once an official of the Democratic Party, and now widely accepted by New Belgrade voters, gave the impression of an apolitical and skilled tactician. However, since he could really play the role of a "tip in the balance", Šapić's decision on cooperation or non-cooperation with certain parties, especially if it is the ruling party, could affect the very outcome of the election.

"WEATHER": By the very name, "Aleksandar Šapić Mayor" your list doesn't seem to leave room for anything else. You once stated that you are not really interested in other functions. What is so attractive to you about local government, that is, the position of mayor?

ALEXANDAR ŠAPIĆ: I've been in this job since 2009, eight or nine years already, and none of the potential candidates who will run for these elections have that much experience in local politics. None of them have so many years of continuous involvement in local politics and local self-government. I was the assistant mayor for three years and the president of the most populous municipality in Serbia for almost six more years. When we take all that into account, it makes sense to me that after eight, nine years and after the re-election in New Belgrade, I have the ambition to climb to a higher level. Apart from that, I really can't meet people's expectations anymore, because the powers and authorities that I have as the president of the municipality are very limited in today's conditions, according to today's city statute, but not only today but also before, only now they are less and less . My candidacy is far more logical than anyone else's, if we look at it that way, because after so many years in this business, it is most natural for me to continue on that path of dealing with local self-government and run for mayor. Another thing is that today's political atmosphere in Serbia is "give what you give", today you are the minister of one area, tomorrow another, and the day after tomorrow a third.

Your candidacy is followed by media calls, announcements of investigations and arrests, building premises under your name... Who is behind all this??

I have no proof to convict anyone of these things, I just have reasonable suspicions.

Which you can't say publicly?

Then I would be the same as those who do all that. However, there is much more pressure than the public is aware of. The police have been with us in the municipality for a year, since the moment when I publicly said that I was going to run for mayor. Budget inspection worked here for six-seven months, and there is no budget control that lasts that long. The budget inspection came to us seven days ago again. Before that, a regular state auditor came to us for a year. We received a budget inspection report typed on 900 pages, mind you 900 pages for one city municipality, according to which not a single thing here was allegedly done well. That report was submitted to the police in its entirety in electronic form, and it was given to us in printed form, whereby we had a legal deadline of five days to make objections. We could not even physically respond to the printed 900 pages within that period. After that, the police go through every point of the budget report for a year, because every point says that nothing is wrong, and then the police have to investigate everything one by one. The pressure here is terrible and I never spoke about it. Even now, I wouldn't say it if you didn't ask, because then I would fall into that state of "complaining" and "whining", and that, firstly, is not my style, and secondly, the tabloid media can't wait for such situations to make fun of them and on all ways make them meaningless.

It even goes so far as to publish some senseless private criminal charges against me on the front pages of tabloids. There are no institutional ones yet, although I wouldn't be surprised by anything in the future.

Until recently, you had the attitude that you wanted to be mayor after these elections, regardless of which party supports you?

I would like you to find such a statement of mine. That is an interpretation and a wrong one at that.

Dobro, exactly what you said?

I said - I will talk to everyone, because whoever deals with this business and is not ready to talk, it is better not to deal with it. I will have my plan for Belgrade and it is logical that I will try to see with whom I could find a common language about it. Which does not mean that I will agree with him at any cost. I also said that there are individuals with whom I would not even plant flowers, let alone lead Belgrade. Those are my two very explicit statements. And the third most important, which no one has said so far, is that I will not participate in political trade. And that means, if I enter the city assembly, and I don't have the opportunity to lead Belgrade, I will not agree to the political trade of getting public companies, positions, just for the sake of participation in the government. No party, movement or organization has declared this until today, four weeks before the elections. And that doesn't bother anyone, that everyone is ready to trade, and at the same time everyone repeats that they have the best candidates for mayor. Do you know that there are parties that have been strangling power for decades by never assuming a more responsible position? But that doesn't bother anyone either. That's why it bothers me who says that I won't give up my views, just like I won't give up my position: either I will get the opportunity to lead Belgrade and agree with some people to participate in it together, or I won't participate in the city government and I won't use the benefits it provides participation in government if your councilors raise their hand for someone else to become the first man of the capital.

You will only agree with some?

In addition to individuals, in the meantime, parties have also appeared with whom I would also not cooperate.

Can you at least name them?

I can. Until now, as I said, there have been individuals, for example, when the mayor sends me a budget officer, who behaves outside of all his responsibilities and mistreats all employees in the municipality, then someone sends me the police, then some individuals who tell lies about me and untruths, and brutally insulting me along the way, but they were all individuals. And then the organizations, that is, the parties, came forward and took an official position, primarily the Serbian Progressive Party. For the last few months, this party has been issuing its official announcements in which it behaves just like those individuals. If I advocate the thesis that there is no hate speech, that someone who is your political opponent does not mean that he should also be your enemy, then I cannot accept that tomorrow I will manage the city together with people who treat me completely the opposite. By doing so, I give the impression that I agree to be an ordinary political rag, with which everyone can do whatever they want, and all this just for the sake of political office. Well, I'm afraid they misjudged me there.

What is written in those official announcements of SNS?

Every two days there are announcements from both SNS and its highest officials, which say that I am the worst robber, hochstapler, bully, beater, and I don't even know what kind of simple insults they make, which no decent and dignified person has endured. would. It's about people who promote that kind of behavior that consists of slander, hatred, accusations, the most heinous insults... I'm not talking about the tabloids, that's a separate story, nor about anything that could be suspected, I'm not even talking about the leaflets where I'm insulted, which they are not signed, nor about when someone visits the premises of a building and signs me, I'm not even talking about fake websites that told the most heinous lies about me, so I'm not talking about that: because it's like, it's not known who is I'm talking about what people clearly signed and said: it's us, the SNS, we say that Šapić is a robber, hochstapler, scumbag, thug...

Why did it bother you just now??

Until a few months ago, I really believed that before these elections we should talk about local, infrastructural, social problems, about what is necessary for Belgrade. However, here the story has risen to a completely different level, we have robbers and non-robbers. Good and bad. And such a story benefits many, and not just one side. I tried to make it clear - that I want, as far as the city of Belgrade as well as New Belgrade is concerned, to talk about local issues and problems, to talk to all the people who want to talk to me, so let's see if we can come to an agreement. That was my position. In the meantime, certain organizations, i.e. the parties, have decided that it is completely unimportant to them and that the most important thing for them is how they will qualify someone.

Is non-cooperation with SNS your final decision?, especially after the election?

My final decision is that after these elections, if we become part of the city assembly, we will have communication with everyone, because that is our obligation on behalf of the citizens, be it the government or the opposition, but after everything that has happened in the past few months, there is no longer even one percent the chances that we can make any agreement with SNS regarding the joint management of Belgrade. I can be "St. Peter", not the mayor, there is no agreement anymore. And there is no agreement because everything we stand for is the opposite of how they behave.

You haven't been a member of the DS for a long time., in public appearances, you do not side with any political option. Where did the ruling structure come from so many shouts at you??

That's a question for them, not for me. Even before the Novobeograd elections, I said that if I get the trust of the citizens of Novobeograd to continue leading the municipality, then I will run for mayor. So I repeated it after the victory in New Belgrade, except that no one listened to me. Just as I said that I will never join any political organization again. Just like I said that I will talk to everyone, but I will not agree to blackmail, orders, and even then no one listened to me. They only shouted, he is Đilas's, he is Vučić's, he is Tadić's... Here, people are constantly trying to put you in a mold that has already been seen, a form that already exists. Now, we've come to the point where I don't fit into any form, so I've annoyed everyone alive. Like when I said that I will either get a chance to lead Belgrade or I won't hold any other position in the city.

You are unique in that you should be the mayor?

I just don't know if the other candidates are running to be city secretaries for communal housing or child protection, or if they also want to be mayors? The only difference is that I say it openly, and everyone else calculates. Pay attention, I'm not conditioning anyone, it's just like if you went to a sports competition and said: I'm competing, but even if I'm out of the group, and you let me sit on the bench afterwards, I'll stay with you. I never liked sitting on the bench. It's the same here, as far as I'm concerned. On the other hand, I say openly: whoever leads Belgrade, even that SNS, I want them to have more success than before, because I don't have another city, and I can only wish well for my hometown, regardless of who led it. .

Because you say you will not go with SNS om, do you expect an escalation of pressure and an even dirtier campaign towards you?

I don't know, I don't want to think about it at all. As for me, I am not afraid of anyone's threats, not even concrete moves on the subject. It is certain that I will not give up my life principles, human beliefs, that I will treat everyone decently and culturally, but that I will not allow myself to make any arrangements with those who belittle and slander me tomorrow. Pub and street behavior is for the pub and the street, and the rules that rule there must not be applied in public life, especially while we are in such responsible places. I strongly believe that even SNS voters do not approve of such a campaign, in fact, I am absolutely sure of it.

Do you have political support from anyone in the opposition??

I haven't talked to anyone, and I won't talk to anyone before the election. Secondly, I am one of the few, if not the only one, who has a real chance of entering the city assembly, and going to these elections independently, without any coalition behind me.

Can you explain your list of only 48 councillors, out of a possible 110?

Today, everyone appoints sportsmen, actors, people who will resign as councilors, which is an abuse of voters. At the same time, those councilors are not voted for. Will you see the list of councilors at the polling station? You won't. So, why are we lying to people to vote for councilors?

When you go to local elections anywhere in Europe or the region, you have two lists. On one is the list of candidates for mayor, and on the other is the list of councilors for whom you will vote. This is called voting for councillors. There is no voting for councilors in Belgrade, that is a lie. There is list voting where you only know the list holder and have no idea who is on the list. Another manipulation is the lie that councilors are the people who will lead Belgrade. In 99 percent of cases they are not. These are people who get on the list, later resign, I even listen to people who say - I will be on the list, and then I will leave, and I will continue to deal with culture, medicine, sports. Then why the list?

My councilors will remain on the list regardless of whether they are the government or the opposition. He will not resign and will not hold executive positions in Belgrade. The same as it is now in New Belgrade. They accuse me of nepotism. The member of the Assembly of the city and municipality of Novi Beograd does not have any privilege or privilege, none. No one, literally, no one got any executive office. They say, he set up his family, relatives. Where? On the list of councilors to save my votes, so that they would not all be preletacevic tomorrow. Since it is the main sports discipline in Serbia in the last 20 years. I expose those people to great pressure and flattery for 2000 dinars per assembly here or 10.000 dinars per month in the city of Belgrade. These are all the privileges that my councilors will have. The team of people is something else, they are the people who lead New Belgrade with me, who have experience and who will be presented in ten days.

Why only 48??

No one has ever taken 110 councilors. No one has ever taken more than 56, except SNS in 2014. I'm an objective, realistic person, I know that I can't even take 56. My interest was to be placed as well as possible in the submission of the list. But on the first day, not a single notary wanted to come to us, on the second day they hardly came to us. As soon as we collected a sufficient number of signatures and passed forty councilors, we submitted the list.

Provided that it remains as it is after the election, mayor from the SNS, and you are the president of the municipality of New Belgrade, How do you see your cooperation??

The same as before - we do not cooperate, although I think it is our duty to the citizens to do the opposite. We must not mix party animosities here. I have repeated several times that there is not a single project that is in the interest of the citizens of New Belgrade in which I will not participate together with the City, whoever leads it. I have no right not to participate in it.

Many see populism or marketing in your success with the citizens of New Belgrade. Examples of various privileges are most often cited, discount for swimming pools, free lessons, as a way to win over voters.

Possibly. If various discounts and free programs are marketing, then yes. But I think that a discount is still a discount, that free is still free. I don't want to interpret myself at all and explain the reason for my success with the people of Novobeograd. And even if I managed to bewitch the people of Novobeograd, it means that I'm good with magic. But I didn't fool them. I never had big promises, everything we did here is genuine and I think that is the secret of our success. After all, walk around New Belgrade and ask people to tell you for themselves.

Are there any others?, the structural problems of New Belgrade that you have not solved?

They exist. Do you know what the budget of the municipality of New Belgrade is? It amounts to 0,6 percent of the city's budget, and a fifth of Belgrade's citizens live in New Belgrade. Of that 0,6 percent, more than half goes to fixed costs. If the money we have was divided according to the number of inhabitants, I could buy chocolate for every citizen of Novobeograd for the whole year. If someone thinks that I can do some great things out of it, then fine, but I don't think I can. Within the scope of competence, authority and authority that I have as the mayor of the municipality, I squeezed every drop from the dogwood tree and managed to give back to the citizens as much as I could do for them. Many good things happened in New Belgrade even before me, but many did not. There were no parks that we arranged, playgrounds, fields, there were not only free programs but also various benefits and privileges that we provided to the citizens of New Belgrade. That is why I am running for the city level. Because, as I said before, the expectations from me are much higher now. I don't blame people for not understanding the city's statute, powers and responsibilities, I didn't know them either 10 years ago. I resent those who decide about it and keep people in error. I am more in favor of complete centralization than this false decentralization. We have presidents of 17 municipalities who are clearly told: if you are not vertical with the city and republic authorities, you cannot do anything. And the fact that the budget of all 17 municipalities is less than 10 percent of the city's budget is a separate story.

So why are we talking about whether there are bigger problems? There is, only that I cannot solve them, they are solved by the mayor, the city administration. New Belgrade is dirty, poorly cleaned, but even according to the statute, we do not even have the right to form our own small utility company that will only empty, say, garbage cans. Many people are deceiving people today by saying that I do things that are marketing, and I don't do big and serious things. Let them tell me what great and serious thing I could have done and didn't, and where I deceived the citizens by allowing them to have various privileges in their daily life.

When you compare all that now with the policy of the previous government?

The budget was similar, but the difference was that the city companies helped us more. Since DS is not in power, we only have a budget, and that's all we have. We have big obstacles in carrying out some paperwork, for example, we can no longer get papers for the reconstruction of any park. Because according to the statute of the city, the parks are arranged by the City Greenery. In order for the city municipality to organize the park, it has to request a lot of permits from the City Secretariat for Communal and Housing, and we can no longer get anything from them.

Other municipalities are in a similar position?

All of them are connected with the authorities of the SNS. Everything depends on that. Here, for example, in the last two rebalancing of the City's budget, only New Belgrade received zero dinars.

On the website of the Foundation for Helping Patients "Be humane" there was a recent hacker attack. Is this the first time this has happened?

The first time. Never in the previous five years. By the way, the foundation became interesting to some people only a few months ago, and before that no one touched it. Not that he didn't touch her, but no one cared what we were doing. I have already said several times that anyone who has any doubts about the work of that foundation, whether the money is being misused there, where it ends up, should immediately go and report it to the competent authorities, who are welcome to control every dinar that has ever entered the foundation 24 hours a day. and left it, but to be careful when the foundation is publicly attacked, because this directly threatens its credibility, and then the lives of more than 350 people, primarily children, for whom the foundation is currently fighting. Aside from the fact that we have such a model that you can also control from the outside if you want.

Those who were bothered by the foundation a month and a half before the elections and who characterize it as my campaign and promotion, I invite, especially politicians, to open a humanitarian foundation each, to help sick people and to advertise themselves that way. Everyone would be better off. If this was my good campaign, let everyone start like that, we will help people and it will be our advertisement. It is better to spend time, energy and our money in building good foundations than paying advertisements to marketing agencies. That is my appeal for all future campaigns to those who accuse me of this.

How different is your concept of Belgrade's development from today's??

Belgrade should develop according to the interests of Belgraders, its policy cannot be directed towards foreign tourists, because Belgraders will never live from tourism. It will never be Prague, Barcelona, ​​Vienna, or Madrid, never, it must develop for the sake of the people of Belgrade, and all foreigners and all our friends are welcome. Developing Belgrade because of foreign tourists is an insult to the citizens of Belgrade. Architecturally, infrastructurally, urbanistically, and economically, Belgrade must develop in accordance with our objective circumstances. You can't transfer models from other big cities, or traffic solutions, or anything else. To have a clean city, we don't need foreign investors for that. I would increase the social programs to the maximum, because today almost all social cases are, more or less, because hardly any family has as much as it needs. To those who say "Sapić equals marketing", I say - no, I only return that money to the citizens from the budget, so that they feel it in something more concrete. I think that in these eight years I got to know the Belgrade system well, the mechanisms that the city has at its disposal through managing the municipality according to its possibilities, and I think that I would be able to do something that the people of Belgrade could notice. A lot of things can be done, but above all, the politics of Belgrade should be directed towards the citizens of Belgrade, our specificities, our architecture, our communal problems, and not because we saw how beautiful something is in Barcelona.

Before an election, you said that you won't promise anything and that you don't even want to convince the citizens that you are the best. Do you still stick to that today??

I'm staying. I'm not going to convince them that I'm the best, because the citizens based on what they saw, and according to their feelings, both now and before, if they didn't get the impression that I was the one, regardless of the fact that I certainly didn't have the same conditions as the others, they shouldn't to vote for me. I can't even begrudge the people who are going to be scammed, let them pay attention. People will get who they vote for. And I would really like for local politics to be separated from the high level and if we have to argue, to argue about local things, about local problems, to agree, that we are not stupid and to praise the political opponent if he has done something good. Well, I have repeatedly praised the city government that it is good that they cleaned up the Sava coast. Another thing is whether I would choose that type of architecture there, which in my opinion fits better in New Belgrade than in the old part of the city. Would I build a fountain that sings in Slavia - I wouldn't. But, that's what I think, it doesn't mean that I'm right. That's why I don't comment on SNS, citizens have choices: if SNS is good, people will vote for them again. I wouldn't do it like that, but where does it say that I'm right.