Gasic was a target of opponents of the current government even before he became a minister, for various reasons. One of the first was to challenge his formal education, beginning with high school. In his official biography, the minister wrote that he graduated from high school in Kruševac, where he was born in 1967, and that he earned a degree in economics from the Faculty of Economics in Niš, where he also enrolled for a master's degree. Along with the stories that he once worked in Trial as a ceramicist (and that he saw the Gymnasium only in the first two grades of directed education), the search for Gašić's diplomas began, because he was not on the list of graduates who graduated from Kruševac Gymnasium.
TROUBLE WITH DIPLOMAS AND BUSINESS: Dragan Đilas expressed doubts about Gašić's degree in economics, and in 2013 Gašić responded by claiming that he graduated in 2003 (he declared his degree from the Faculty of Economics when he was elected mayor of Kruševac in 2012), but the burlesque surrounding Gašić's degrees still continues, with the claims of his opponents that his master's thesis mentor is his cousin, professor Evica Petrović.
Ever since he actively devoted himself to politics, his business activities have also attracted the attention of the public. Since 1989, he has been engaged in private entrepreneurship, his fellow citizens know him by the nickname Bata Santos, which he acquired in the nineties when he was engaged in the coffee trade, and he was also the co-owner of "Grand Cafe". He lived and worked in Greece for many years. He is the owner and director of the company Saco, which includes Televizija Plus and Santos tea and coffee production, but he transferred the management rights to Dejan Miladinović. In addition, he owns two large gas stations. He was declared the manager of the year of the city of Kruševac in 1998, the winner of the Vidovdan Award of the city of Kruševac in 2014, and in December 2012 he received a special award from NALED for the achieved reforms in the city administration and contribution to the improvement of the economic environment.
Judging by the data published in the press, Gašić's business has not been going great lately, the accounts of most of his companies have been blocked for more than three years. In addition, the foundation stone for the Church of St. John the Baptist, founded by the Gašić family, which financed the construction, was recently laid on Bagdala. When asked by a journalist where he got the money from, given his business problems, Gašić answered: "Unlike others, I entered politics with an Audi Q7, not a fica." The question of where the money comes from is actually for those who enter politics with a ficha, and leave it with an Audi."
In the report of the Council for the fight against corruption for the period from 2011 to 2014, it was stated that certain politicians, openly or through family members, are owners of mostly local newspapers. Gašić's son Vladan is the owner of TV Zone from Niš, and through the company Zona plus he is one of the owners of sports TV from Kruševac. "And my children have to live on something," he told "Blic" when asked about his son Vladan's ownership in several television stations. The account of TV Plus has been blocked since December 2011, but it operates through the company ADD production doo from Kruševac, which is owned by Irene Gašić, the minister's wife. TV Plus is partially financed from the Kruševac budget. The mentioned "Plus" Television received 2009 million dinars from the budget from 2014 to 14,3, the most money for providing services to the city administration of Kruševac was received during the period when Gašić was the mayor, but he says that everything was done according to the competition. "I have been on television for 20 years, and I entered politics in 2008," said Gašić.
Apart from business, he also stood out as a sports worker. He led the women's volleyball club Kruševac Santos to the First B League, and for four years he was the successful director of the football school "Napredak". When it was announced in January 2014 that Nebojša Čović and Bratislav Gašić agreed that his son Milan should come to Crvena zvezda for a tryout, there was an uproar in the public about the alleged protection. A visibly upset Gasic called an impromptu press conference in front of the Maracana where he said that he had done a disservice to his son, that he did not ask for money or rent, but only for a trial, and that Milan passed all the youth categories of Napredek and was a member of the national team. He added that everything had a political connotation, that Aleksandar Vučić knew nothing about it, and that he was going home with his son because of everything.
POLITICAL TRACKS AND WEALTH: Bata Gašić's political career began to develop rapidly within the SNS, of which he is one of the founders in the Rasin district. In June 2012, he was elected mayor of Kruševac, and vice president of SNS in September of that year. He gave up the salary of the mayor of Kruševac in favor of young married couples to whom he gave gold wedding rings if they would marry in the town hall, which was welcomed by fellow citizens, but they talked with one another that he had repeatedly announced the construction of a sports complex with an athletics track, on which they would organize Balkan championship in athletics. The stadium was not built, so the Balkan Championship was taken away from Kruševac.
Before the 2014 elections, he repeatedly pointed out that it would be better if Vucic was prime minister, because he is more energetic than Dacic. His statement was remembered: "Serbian politicians must understand that they were not born to perform all functions in the state." And many think that they would be the best ministers in every department", but in response to rumors that he could be Vučić's choice for defense minister, he said that as a soldier of the party, he would not refuse any assignment, not even a ministerial one. When he was elected Minister of Defense on April 27, 2014, which should have been the crowning glory of his political career, he resigned from the post of mayor of Kruševac.
The derisive comments that a ceramist took the post of Minister of Defense, who emphasizes that his qualification is that he was a good soldier during his military service, could hardly be taken as a basic objection to Gasić's choice; and Aleksandar Vučić, a lawyer with no work experience, Dragan Šutanovac, a mechanical engineer with no work experience, and psychology professor Boris Tadić performed that duty according to the party directive, and their experiences with the army were the same as Gašić's.
A much bigger problem is that Gašić could comfortably have been elected as the Minister of Police, Justice, Labor and Social Affairs or something else, because the crucial qualifications for those ministerial posts are unquestioning loyalty to the prime minister and the party leader and a humble attitude, which is also Gašić's repeatedly demonstrated. For example, when he declared that he would try to perform the duties of the Minister of Defense like his predecessor Vučić, although the only thing that is remembered from Vučić's leadership of the army is the promise to buy new MIGs, which has long since disappeared in the sea of other promises. Admittedly, he is not the only one in humility, and Gašić and his party and non-party colleagues followed Vučić at the military parade in Belgrade last year, when they tore off their raincoats and got soaked to the bare skin in front of a stunned Vladimir Putin.
The vocabulary used by Gašić is identical to that of his party comrades. Every question that seems inconvenient to them, they respond quickly, with the obligatory mention of "the past". Asked how much the military parade cost, he said that "today, the fiercest critics are those who led the army at the expense of the state to Muammar Gaddafi's parade in Libya, and then they did not mention the price" and that, unlike the period until 2012, today the army he plans carefully.
ANDREJ VUCIĆ AND THE ARMY: The cocky attitude only sharpened when more difficult trials came. For example, after the incident during the Pride Parade on September 28, 2014 in Belgrade, in which the brother of the Prime Minister of Serbia, Andrej Vučić, was beaten, who was then in the company of the brother of the Mayor of Belgrade, Predrag Mali, and two members of the Prime Minister's security, members of the Cobra military unit. The prime minister raised the incident to the level of a state problem, claiming that the gendarmes beat Andrej because he is his brother, and the public rose up by asking questions about where the prime minister's brother got military security and who started the incident.
Gašić first claimed that the Cobra members, who were with Andrej Vučić at that moment, were the security of the Prime Minister of Serbia and that they were just keeping him company, and that they went with Andrej to the house of the prime minister's father and mother, not as security, but as an escort , "so that (the incident) would not have happened because of that situation (Pride Parade), and it did happen"; after more than four months, in his reply to the protector of citizens, Saša Janković, Gašić claimed that members of the military police were on a mission "in the capacity of the predecessor of the immediate security of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia", which in itself means nothing.
At the same time, Gašić and the Ministry of Defense persistently refused to provide Janković with the requested documents about the incident and concrete answers to his questions. Finally, in February 2015, the Ombudsperson said that he filed reports against both the gendarmes and the Kobra members, and Gašić stated that he was ashamed to comment on what Janković said and wrote. That shame, of course, did not arise because of Janković's words that the amount of incompetence and inaccuracy in what Gašić sent him as answers to his questions was such that "only one thing must be concluded: Minister Gašić is mocking the legal order of the Republic of Serbia, truth and intelligence citizens, and thereby most seriously damages the reputation of the Ministry of Defense".
The aforementioned disgrace related to the activities and issues of Janković himself, who was expressly declared a suspicious element, an enemy of the state, etc., in which the military magazine "Odbrana" took part, with an article that was announced on the front page with "Army in the crosshairs: Protector against protector ". Gašić told "Blic" on the occasion of the mentioned text that he did not see the disputed title at all, that he did not have time to deal with idle tweeters (Janković on Twitter accused the Ministry of Defense of "cowardly tactics" which "reflect a view of the world that sees only enemies for to destroy, wars to start, spines to break, minds to close, honor to insult"), and not to interfere with the writing of journalists.
The House of Human Rights and Democracy sent an appeal to the Serbian Parliament for the removal of ministers who destroy the rule of law, including Bratislav Gašić, Nebojša Stefanović, Nikola Selaković and Aleksandar Vulin; The Democratic Party demanded that Gasić and the director of the VBA be removed because of the "Serbian Watergate", an affair related to the wiretapping of opposition leaders, party activists, union activists and certain holders of judicial functions by the VBA, which was pointed out by the ombudsman Saša Janković. All those requests were accompanied by derisive laughter from Gašić's party base, and Gašić claimed that former military minister Dragan Šutanovac eavesdropped on the President of the Republic, government ministers and other colleagues from his party, which is why Šutanovac announced the lawsuit.
Among the "side" problems, Gašić also attracted the public's attention when in October of last year he ordered the retirement of the transgender major of the Serbian Armed Forces, Helena, because "she was diagnosed with a diagnosis that can cause harmful consequences for the reputation of the Serbian Armed Forces." He later apologized for the administrative error in the retirement decision, which in fact followed "due to the fact that he had completed 20 years of service and that the needs of the service required his termination", but he also accused Major Helena, due to her public statements, of being part of an orchestrated campaign against the Serbian Armed Forces, part of interest circles whose goal is to attack Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić, asked whether "the fact that we retired a person who has been registered for prostitution falls into discrimination."
HELICOPTER FALL: Everything that happened before during Gasic's ministry was instantly overshadowed when, on March 13, a military helicopter carrying a sick baby from Raška crashed near the airport in Surčin, killing seven people. As a minister, Branislav Gašić gave the order for the helicopter to take off on a mission to save the baby, and the discussions about what happened after that have not calmed down even a month after the tragedy, both in the public and within the ruling structures.
Gašić himself gave a bunch of confused statements, from the fact that he participated all night in the search for the missing helicopter (Aleksandar Vučić said that Gašić was in Kruševac, Gašić later stated that he was on his way to Belgrade when he heard that the helicopter had fallen), to that the weather conditions, according to the information he had, "at that moment were absolutely favorable" (statement to Pink on March 16). When asked if he was in contact with the Minister of Health Lončar during the evening when the helicopter fell, Gašić answered on RTS: "During the initiation of the story itself, the minister, since they called the Ministry of Health from the hospital, we did talk about it." We heard from each other later after all these events. But, you know, someone's insinuations... I think I was clear a while ago, the only thing is to teleport myself from Kruševac to some airport, neither was the intention, nor did I..."
In an interview with "Blic", Citizens' Protector Saša Janković recently said: "Although he persistently runs away from it and sees in everything a 'connection with the former regime', the Minister of Defense is responsible for promoting blind obedience in the body he leads." Someone wrote on social networks that the cause of the helicopter crash was fear. The general's fear of saying 'no' to the minister. I don't go so far as to blame any politician for the helicopter crash, but they are responsible for the atmosphere of fear, they are responsible for the fact that fear exists even among generals and pilots, officers known for their "willedness"... Possible criminal responsibility for the tragedy is dealt with by the judiciary, but in addition to criminal liability, there are other types of responsibility for omissions, and even military commissions noted a huge number of omissions."
The government is trying to forget the story about the prime minister's brother, Kobra, and the gendarmerie (the trial of the gendarmerie is postponed indefinitely), and even the most persistent people are tired of talking about the responsibility of Andrej and Aleksandar Vučić, Gašić and others. Before anyone raised the question of responsibility (or guilt) for the helicopter tragedy, not to mention any reports, Aleksandar Vučić declared that he would not appoint Ministers Gasić and Lončar, so Gasić can feel safe in his place, at least for now .
However, the crash of the helicopter ignited a conflict within the army itself between "Tomi's" and "Vučić's" men. Gašić is known as the prime minister's man, the prime minister is currently the most powerful man in the country, but in that game, people like Gašić are expendable figures, easily replaceable by the like and the same, who can be sacrificed for some interest.
In any case, Bratislav Gašić will certainly not be remembered for being the first Serbian defense minister who participated in the NATO summit, but for the numerous affairs, and now tragedies, that marked his ministry. It is possible that all this would have happened if someone else had been in his place, but the lack of knowledge and experience, obedience to superiors and arrogance towards dissenters as the only recommendations for power, surely increase the probability of bad events.
