Brnabic: Sound-Cannon Hoax Planned for Two Months
Serbia's parliament speaker says the sound-cannon lie was prepared for nearly two months to provoke civil war; the opposition SRCE wants prosecutors to investigate her instead.
- Parliament speaker Ana Brnabic says the sound-cannon lie was planned for nearly 2 months.
- She claims the goal was to provoke civil war and portray the president as a killer of his own people.
- The opposition party SRCE wants prosecutors to investigate Brnabic herself.
- A presidential adviser asked who will ultimately be held to account.
Ana Brnabic, speaker of the National Assembly of Serbia, said on Friday that the so-called sound-cannon lie had, in her words, been planned for nearly two months, arguing that an organized intent stood behind the campaign rather than a spontaneous public reaction. The statement came amid a sharpening political conflict over one of the most contested episodes of the current electoral cycle, and Brnabic called on the relevant authorities to determine who took part in planning and carrying out the campaign.
Brnabic specified that, by her account, the aim of the entire operation was to incite civil war and to present President Aleksandar Vucic as a man prepared to kill his own people. It is one of the gravest charges the leadership has leveled at the protest organizers and part of the opposition, and a claim that, if proven, moves into the realm of criminal rather than merely political responsibility.
Who actually planned the campaign?
An accusation that something was planned for two months implies there are traces, documents and people who can be named. In her remarks Brnabic named no one, instead shifting the burden onto prosecutors and police, urging them to uncover who devised the campaign and who executed it. In politics such claims are rarely made without backing, yet they are just as rarely substantiated with evidence on the same day, so it now falls to the institutions to show whether the words are matched by action.
Context matters. The sound-cannon affair has weighed on relations between the government and the opposition for months, and each side draws its own story from it. For the government it is proof of organized destabilization; for part of the opposition it is an attempt to push responsibility for the disputed event onto demonstrators. Brnabic’s statement does not calm that rift but deepens it, because for the first time it explicitly links the alleged lie to an intent to provoke armed conflict.
What does the opposition want?
The opposition’s response was swift and sharp. The Serbia Center party, better known as SRCE, demanded that prosecutors investigate Brnabic herself, precisely over her statements about planning civil war and the killing of the president. The party said this was, in its words, one of the most monstrous attempts to deliberately incite panic, fear and instability, thereby turning the parliament speaker from accuser into a potential suspect.
That opens a situation in which both sides summon each other before prosecutors. Presidential adviser Branka Djukic asked who will be held to account in the whole case, another signal that the government intends to insist on establishing responsibility. Taken together, Djukic’s question and SRCE’s demand show that the dispute is no longer only about what happened, but about who will bear the consequences.
For now there is no confirmation that either side has filed a formal complaint naming names, nor has the prosecution announced that it is opening a case in response to Brnabic’s call. Politically, however, the line is drawn. The government claims this was a planned operation against the president and the state; the opposition claims it is a dangerous fabrication that in itself sows unrest. One question remains, and the institutions, not the spokespeople, will have to answer it: if something really was planned for two months, who are the people who can be named, and will any of them, from any side, finally stand trial?
