Vucevic Calls Saicic 'Kostunica 2.0' on TV Informer

Serbian Progressive Party president Milos Vucevic said on November 3, during a guest appearance on TV Informer, that the Student List holds a majority in the National Assembly but refuses to take responsibility. In his words, it is using that time for “revolutionary terror.” He called academic Radomir Saicic a new trick played on citizens and “Kostunica 2.0,” and accused Croatia of influencing Serbia through the Student List.

Everything that follows is Vucevic’s own claims, made in a single television appearance. None of the three texts that carried his remarks records a response from the Student List or from Saicic.

What did Vucevic say about Saicic and Kostunica?

He began with what the Student List, in his view, is preparing. He said the Student List has to find someone who will be reassuring to “patriotic Serbia,” because, as he put it, passions have been stirred up, and that this person is Saicic.

“My impression is that the blockaders are preparing a new trick for citizens, Kostunica 2.0, and that is Saicic,” Vucevic said.

He developed the comparison by invoking Kostunica and the DOS coalition, noting that he was a member of the Radicals at the time:

“Academic Saicic is supposed to be a ‘factor of stability’… That is how they lied to us about Kostunica. I was in the Radicals back then, but the people from the DOS were gentlemen compared to these ones. Kostunica deceived us like that, delivered everything to The Hague. I recognize the story of Kostunica repeating itself, because back then they were afraid of Djindjic and Cank. And in the end everything turned out catastrophic for Serbia.”

In his telling, Vojislav Kostunica is the example of a man who, according to Vucevic, “delivered everything to The Hague.” Saicic is, for Vucevic, his present-day counterpart.

What does Vucevic claim about Croatia?

The second part of the appearance concerned Zagreb. Vucevic said that a European power had appointed Croatia as the boss of the Western Balkans and that it is its closest partner, controlling Montenegro and Serbia. He did not name that power.

“Zagreb is the one asking, that is the ‘counter’ hall. That is what we have lived to see. Maybe we could congratulate Zagreb on its election results, they have carried out their political agenda. They do not hide that they are pursuing that policy of theirs. Croatia has been given the tools to control this part of Europe. Look at what they are doing to Montenegro, those humiliations. Croatia knows what it is doing, they run a serious policy.”

From that he drew a message for Student List voters. “You cannot fault Vucic for his policy on Kosovo by handing Serbia over to Croatia,” Vucevic said, adding that Kosovo will not get a better policy either. He also said the goal is to divide Serbs on both sides of the Drina.

How did he describe the Student List and Informer?

Vucevic called TV Informer the only patriotic and freedom-loving television station, one that has spoken about key national issues and is therefore, as he said, “a thorn in the side” of the Student List. The break-in at Informer, he claims, caused disgust and nausea among the majority of Serbia. He described the Student List this way:

“They are the least free people and they represent single-mindedness. Through deceptive actions, the colored revolutions managed to package the idea that they liberated Serbia.”

He also claims the “colored revolution” began in Vojvodina. In Novi Sad, he says, the blockaders painted over Serbian tricolors and spilled hundreds of liters of red paint, and now present themselves as “public sanitation workers.”

He also criticized Dinko Gruhonjic, saying he “speaks in pure Zagreb-bourgeois dialect” and “is not worthy of speaking in Serbian,” as well as professor Jova Bakic, with a remark about the “supposedly Serbian patriots” who embrace him. Among his examples of anti-Serbian policy he listed the Serbian Orthodox Church changing its calendar:

“Isn’t it anti-Serbian policy for the Serbian Orthodox Church to change its calendar, and who among the bishops is worthy?”

Why did he mention the Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj gymnasium?

Vucevic asked why they “attacked” the Serbian Orthodox gymnasium in Novi Sad, which he described as part of a single whole with the Bishop’s Palace. He singled out the treatment of its director, Radivoje Stojkovic:

“The disgrace that director Radivoje Stojkovic was treated like a criminal, in handcuffs, a man who did not allow the school to be politicized, and then they released him and banned him from entering the gymnasium.”

In the same conversation Vucevic said that in Cacak and Kraljevo nobody claimed a Serbian church should not be built, but in Novi Sad they did.