The Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime of Serbia has taken an important step toward fulfilling the primary demand of the students that sparked the months-long protests.
On August 1, two judicial rulings in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina shook the gloomy picture of political crisis and weak institutions in the Western Balkans.
The President of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, was finally sentenced by the Court of BiH to one year of imprisonment and six years of prohibition from engaging in politics for contempt of the decisions of the High Representative Christian Schmidt. Dodik was found guilty of signing decrees by which he sought to block the application on the territory of the Republika Srpska of decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH and of the High Representative of the international community. In short, for undermining the Dayton Peace Agreement, which was leading to the disintegration of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
On the same day, exactly nine months after the collapse of the concrete canopy and the death of 16 people, the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime of Serbia arrested 11 persons suspected of corruption related to the railway modernization project from Novi Sad to the Hungarian border, part of which was the reconstruction of the Novi Sad railway station.
This is not the first arrest in the “canopy” case, and among those detained so far are two former ministers of construction — Tomislav Momirović and Goran Vesić. In addition to them, the assistant to the minister of construction, a former director and an investment manager of the state enterprise “Serbian Railways Infrastructure” and others have been arrested. All of them are suspected of corruption, abuse of office and causing damage to the Serbian budget of over $115 million, in some cases — charging fees for works 500% higher than the actual price.
The suspects are accused of having “provided material benefit” to the consortium of Chinese firms CRIC&CCCC, which is building the high-speed railway, in the amount of nearly $19 million. Based on the agreement between Serbia and China, the contract with this Chinese consortium was concluded without holding a tender.
In short, Serbia is undergoing the largest corruption investigation in the country’s modern history.
A decisive process or a controlled crisis?
None of these two cases, theoretically crucial for the political stability of the region, caused euphoria among citizens, nor categorical laudatory comments from international actors. First and foremost, in Serbia because this is only one of the steps in the “canopy” case, which, given the state of Serbian justice, may have absolutely unpredictable final results.
President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić often comments on and belittles the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime in the media. The EU has been restrained and has not yet reacted, but through various institutions and parliamentarians Brussels has for some time been expressing concern about pressure on the judiciary and the lack of judicial independence in Serbia.
Earlier, European public prosecutor Laura Codruţa Kövesi stated that misuse of EU funds during the reconstruction of the railway in Novi Sad is being investigated.
In BiH, as is already common practice, opinions are divided depending on whether one is referring to the Federation of BiH or to the Republika Srpska. Of course, no one expected that an exponent of Moscow and Putin in the Western Balkans would so easily accept the verdict. “I do not accept the verdict,” Dodik declared and announced the holding of a referendum “about himself,” that is, in relation to the verdict.
Dodik was supported by his ally in the “Serbian world” and re-packer of the “Greater-Serb idea,” the President of Serbia Vučić, which finally exposed earlier suspicions regarding disrespect for the territorial integrity of BiH and its institutions.
In response to the recent arrests in Serbia, Vučić and his executive power react more turbulently, calling the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime a “tied mafioso structure” and part of a “color revolution” against him personally. Pro-regime and aggressive tabloids and their video channels systematically attack the Prosecutor for Organized Crime, Mladen Nenadić.
The media hysteria, which the President of Serbia does not hide, may indicate that prosecutor Nenadić and his Organized Crime team have begun “doing their job,” and that is precisely what the students demanded when they led the protests that have been ongoing in Serbia for nine months.
The inquiry commission investigating responsibility for the Novi Sad accident, which consists of a group of independent experts, university professors and specialists from various fields, claims to have evidence indicating that corruption in the “canopy” case may lead to the top of power and to the president’s office itself.
There are, of course, doubts not only about the determination but also about the real capabilities of the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime, given that Aleksandar Vučić’s regime controls everything — from the highest institutions of the state to fishermen’s associations in the most remote villages of Serbia. Arresting former ministers and high officials also requires coordinated work with the police, which hints that Vučić no longer controls law enforcement agencies and other forces.
On the other hand, the protests, which until the end of June were led by students, have moved into a phase of decentralization and are now dispersed in gatherings of citizens — in local communities, municipalities and small settlements. Undoubtedly, their massiveness has weakened, but in this war of attrition the regime has also weakened.
Vučić is still not cornered enough to call early general elections, which the students demanded in order to have their demands fulfilled, the main one of which is to punish those guilty of the death of 16 people at the Novi Sad railway station. The protests now, during the summer and annual vacations, do not have the power to force Vučić to do anything, even to call elections.
Every day there is more violence at local protests, and Vučić’s regime, on the decline of the protest wave, has begun with reprisals and is conducting purges among disloyal institutions and individuals. The constant presence of conflicts between demonstrators and local authorities and the police may prompt Vučić to even greater repressions.
Those who protested in previous months are being arrested illegally, and analysts already now call Vučić’s Serbia “the Balkan Belarus” or “a Latin American dictatorship”. Whether the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime has woken up because of this, or whether this is merely a well-managed crisis on Vučić’s part to reduce internal tension and, above all, avoid pressure from the EU and the USA, which in Ukraine, after the recent intervention of the Ukrainian authorities in the anti-corruption struggle, were very warning?
Maidan — the defendants’ bench
In both cases — in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina — the key question is whether those responsible can be punished? Dodik continues to play his game: on the one hand, he threatens with a referendum and instability, and on the other — offers to buy out the prison term and seeks justice from the same Constitutional Court of BiH that he does not recognize.
Dodik has the support of Hungary and the right wing of the EU, which are supported by the ideology of the Trump administration, that the right wing and almost open fascism is democracy and freedom of speech. On the other hand, now the almost former President of the Republika Srpska is not aided by the determination of certain members of the EU judiciary, who with a firm hand seek to get rid of Russian influence and the threats of future authoritarianism. Precedents were set by the conviction in the case of Marine Le Pen in France, the designation of the AfD party as having “confirmed extremist aspirations” in Germany, and the annulment of presidential elections in Romania.
In Serbia the situation is different. Vučić is a skilled manipulator and negotiator with the West. He currently demonstrates that he has learned the lessons of Slobodan Milošević’s fall, understanding that it is not worth confronting influential Western states, and therefore, in order for them to turn a blind eye to corruption and human rights violations, he gives them what they want (profitable deals, lithium, armaments).
Vučić’s tactic from the very beginning of the “canopy” case process has been prolongation, disinformation and obfuscation. After the prosecution comes the turn of the court…
At the same time, the Serbian president has begun to scandalously apply the mechanism of pardoning those who in Serbia are brought to responsibility for threatening life and serious physical attacks on students who protest. This, on the one hand, additionally raises tensions in society and is a potential trigger for violent protests, and on the other — gives Vučić the opportunity to selectively pardon representatives of the authorities who may be held accountable in the “canopy” case.
Only a day before Dodik’s sentence and the arrests in Serbia, in Ukraine after a wave of protests in several cities and regions, the authorities listened to the youth and returned independence to the anti-corruption institutions that were created after the Maidan and the Revolution of Dignity in 2015. The Ukrainian authorities tried to take control of special judicial bodies that fight corruption, after which thousands of unsatisfied young people aged 18 to 26 filled the streets and squares.
Young Ukrainians do not justify themselves, as the students in Serbia do, who do not wish the overthrow of the president and a “color revolution.” Placards and warnings to President Volodymyr Zelensky were clear — if you do not withdraw the harmful law, you will end up like your predecessors, referring to the former president Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia after the Revolution of Dignity.
Although Zelensky in no way can be compared with pro-Russian Balkan authoritarian leaders, establishing control over special Ukrainian independent anti-corruption institutions in the long term would cause enormous harm to Ukraine’s European integration, to the continuation of excessive enrichment and to the revival of the oligarchic state, a post-Soviet relapse that, in conditions of war against Russia, should have been buried forever.
The wind of change toward authoritarianism blows from the east. Little has been said so far about opaque state contracts with China and its role in corruption and the tragedy in Novi Sad. If candidacy for EU membership is not a sufficient motive, then the death of people should have become a sobering reminder about which system the citizens of Serbia want to live in — democracy or authoritarianism.
The current revolution takes place through the evolution of citizens’ consciousness, and especially of the youth, for whom independent justice is an imperative. Independent of leaders and parties that come and go from power. The aforementioned prosecutor, Laura Codruţa Kövesi, became famous for fighting corruption in Romania and is the sole international authority on the placards of the student protests in Serbia. Every future Maidan in the former socialist states should take place precisely on the defendants’ benches of independent courts, before which no one should be protected.
Boris Varga. Serbian political scientist and journalist.
The articles published in the “Opinions” column reflect the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the position of the Center
