Vucic Calls Paunovic Lawsuit Threat Absurd and Shameful

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic described Jasmina Paunovic’s announcement that she would file a lawsuit as absurd and shameful, raising the temperature in a dispute that until then had run mostly through denials and competing claims. The president chose words that leave no room for nuance, while Paunovic, for her part, stood by her position that the report about a pharmacy in Pec is untrue. The dispute has thus moved past the trading of statements and entered a phase in which a courtroom is being mentioned.

The trigger itself remains narrow and specific. Paunovic had earlier claimed that a published report about a pharmacy in Pec was inaccurate, and said she would challenge it by legal means. The president’s reaction, however, did not stay on the substance of that claim but struck at the very idea of the lawsuit, which he called absurd. In that gap, between a dispute over facts and a dispute over who may sue whom, lies the whole tension of the case.

Why does the language of the reaction outweigh the trigger?

When the top of the state answers the announcement of a single lawsuit with the word shameful, the message grows beyond the individual claim about a pharmacy. It is a pattern that recurs in domestic politics: a specific, almost technical dispute over whether a report is accurate quickly turns into a matter of principle in which authority, rather than evidence, is measured. Instead of the debate staying on the ground of verification, who claims what and with what support, it shifts to the ground of tone, where the winner is the one who speaks louder and with more institutional weight behind them.

Paunovic stands by her denial and her announced lawsuit, which means that the burden of proof, if proceedings actually begin, would fall on a court rather than on the daily cycle of statements. Legally, that is an orderly outcome: disputed claims are resolved by the competent body, not by the loudest side. Politically, however, the labels absurd and shameful were spoken before any filing reached a court, shaping in advance how the public will read any eventual proceedings.

What does this dispute say about a wider pattern?

Episodes like this rarely stay isolated. They build on one another and create an impression of lasting friction between the authorities and those who question them, even when the individual trigger, as here, is reduced to a single claim about a single pharmacy. It is therefore useful for the reader to separate two questions that easily merge on days like this: first, whether the specific report about a pharmacy in Pec is true, and second, whether the announced lawsuit is a legitimate move or, as the president judged, an absurdity.

The answer to the first question will come from fact-checking, and to the second from any court proceedings, should they take place. Until then, what remains is an exchange of words in which each side holds its ground: the president to his assessment that the lawsuit threat is shameful, Paunovic to her claim that the report is false. It is worth watching whether the dispute stays at the level of statements or actually ends up before a court, because only there will it become clear whose claims withstand scrutiny.

Should public officials and their critics settle disputes over facts in court, or is even the announcement of a lawsuit, as the president says, absurd?