Serbian ministers hit back in no-confidence debate

Finance Minister Sinisa Mali held up a chart mapping the gas network project in Trstenik and, from his seat in the Serbian parliament, challenged opposition MP Miroslav Aleksic over a pledge made during the 2008 campaign that every citizen would receive 1,000 euros. He repeated the question several times, and it came down to two sentences: did you promise it, and did you deliver it. Mali described Aleksic’s speech as long but foolish, setting the tone for the ruling majority’s response to the motion of no confidence in the government of Djuro Macut.

An extraordinary session that began as an opposition reckoning with the government turned, seen from the governing benches, into the opposite operation. Instead of defending its record, the government opened the archive. The 1990s, privatisation deals, old campaign promises and the personal biographies of opposition MPs became the main material, and ministers rotated at the rostrum faster than during regular parliamentary business.

What is the government offering in response?

Economy Minister Adrijana Mesarovic offered arithmetic rather than polemics. She said previous governments concluded 2,286 privatisation contracts and that 670 of them were cancelled over corruption, using that ratio to argue that the authority to lecture anyone about public money does not sit with those who tabled the motion. The figure was chosen carefully, large enough to be remembered and specific enough that the opposition cannot dismiss it from the rostrum in a single sentence.

First Deputy Prime Minister Ivica Dacic went a step further and brought evidence that could be heard. He played a recording of the sound cannon, a device at the centre of one of the most contested disputes between the government and the opposition for months. The message was that the dispute should be settled by demonstration rather than by an exchange of accusations.

Prime Minister Djuro Macut, for his part, drew a firm line. He refused to comment on questions about the Senjak case, arguing that any answer would amount to an attempt to influence the judiciary. That is also the most sensitive point of the entire session, because the case is part of the reasoning behind the no-confidence motion itself.

Arithmetic that closes the session in advance

Milenko Jovanov, floor leader of the ruling majority, did not wait for the end of the debate to announce the outcome. He said the ruling majority would not vote against its own government, that this had never happened and was not happening now. That reduced the session to a political performance with a known result, a comfortable position for the government and an awkward one for the opposition.

Jovanov also spelled out a detail that public debate often skips. A successful no-confidence vote does not lead automatically to elections; it triggers a procedure in which the president holds consultations with parliamentary groups. For the part of the opposition that sees this session as a shortcut to an early electoral cycle, that is a reminder that one further step stands between the vote and a campaign, and parliament does not control it.

Criticism also came from the other direction. Journalist Mirjana Nikolic said Macut answered every allegation with the formula that it was not true, which in her assessment blocked any dialogue about responsibility before it could begin. That objection cuts to the heart of the session: when both sides know the result of the vote in advance, the debate stops being a check on power and becomes groundwork for the next electoral cycle.

Which argument convinced you more, the government’s defence built on figures from the past or the opposition’s accusations about current scandals?