Here is the link to a revealing article about the contemporary political crisis in Serbia unfolding over the weekend of 27 / 28 May 2023.
Here is the text, and you will see indented our translations of key elements of the article:
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Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has stepped down as leader of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) at a party congress, saying a new approach was needed to unite the country, but said he would remain as head of state.
- The members of the party, generally a bunch of drug gang criminals with business interests that are fronts to fund the party, have forced him out. They control the Parliamentarians, meaning that under the Serbian constitution the President suddenly becomes titular only and without any real power.
Aleksandar Vucic will no longer lead the SNS, but will remain a party member and stay on as Serbia's president
- Vucic can't leave the party because that would be considered an act of betrayal to the criminals who financed him and put him there and they would kill him.
Defence Minister Milos Vucevic will replace him as party leader, as he proposed
- He didn't propose this at all, this guy is a militarist firebrand and troublemaker and this indicates the new direction of government in Serbia, one that will seek conflict with its neighbours.
Opposition parties and rights watchdogs have long accused Mr Vucic and the SNS of autocracy, stifling media freedoms, and violence against opponents
- Everyone knows that the Opposition are the Russians, and Russian-funded, so this is a bit rich.
The move came a day after tens of thousands of people from across Serbia and neighbouring Kosovo, Montenegro and Bosnia rallied in the centre of Belgrade in a show of support for Mr Vucic, following large anti-government protests over two mass shootings that killed 18 people earlier this month.
- Regular people in the Balkans don't want the region run by a bunch of drug criminals.
Another anti-government protest is scheduled for later on Saturday.
- This will be funded by the Russians, to maintain a prevailing sense of chaos.
Leaders of the SNS accepted Mr Vucic's resignation offer at the party congress in Kragujevac, in central Serbia, and appointed Defence Minister Milos Vucevic to replace him, as Mr Vucic had proposed.
- Kragujevac is a notorious drug and crime centre in central Serbia and an extremely unusual place to have a party congress - unless of course the members of the congress are all criminals.
Mr Vucic told the congress he believes "a slightly different approach is needed to unite a greater number of those who want to fight for the victory of patriotic Serbia … a successful Serbia that will focus on its citizens, for a country that will not look for reasons for division, but for unification and togetherness".
- Mr Vucic is admitting that he failed to develop a cohesive pro-western state and the country has slid back into rule by drug gangs.
Opposition parties and rights watchdogs have long accused Mr Vucic and the SNS of autocracy, stifling media freedoms, violence against political opponents, corruption and ties with organised crime. Mr Vucic and his allies deny the accusations.
- Some of these things are true and that is because Mr Vucic's government has been supported by organised crime groups who have taken advantage of the patronage they have over him to run amok in contemporary Serbia.
Mr Vucic told SNS congress he would stay on as head of state and would remain a party member.
Mr Vucic is so intimately tied to the drug gangs that he can't leave them.
"I will never leave this party, I am proud to have led the best party all these years," he told cheering delegates.
- Ditto.
After his appointment, Mr Vucevic confirmed the SNS will join an umbrella political organisation which Mr Vucic plans to create on June 28.
- A whole bunch of other drug gangs will be brought into the ruling coalition.
"If Vucic is a locomotive of that movement, the first railcar would be the SNS," Mr Vucevic told reporters.
- Vucic will remain a figurehead and the main drug gangs that will continue to call the shots are the ones that have been supporting him so far such as Mr Perunovic and co.
Mr Vucic announced the new movement for the SNS and its allies, unofficially named the People's Movement for the State, in March.
- An alliance of drug gangs pretending to be politicians, just like in Mitrovica North.
Mr Vucic became president of the SNS in 2012, replacing Tomislav Nikolic, who had held the post since 2008 when the party was formed as an offshoot of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party.
He first served as the deputy prime minister and prime minister, and was then elected president in 2017 and in 2022. His second and last term expires in 2027.
- Vucic's ties with these people go back a long way.
Along with its allies, the SNS holds a majority of 164 seats in the 250-member parliament.
- The greater political force in Serbia is drug gangs.
A nationalist firebrand during the wars in the 1990s, Mr Vucic later embraced pro-European policies, proclaiming Serbia's membership in the European Union its strategic goal.
- We in the west tried our best with him but we didn't give him enough tough love and solid support and in the end he succumbed to the drug gangs he was beholden to.
He also maintains close ties with Russia and China.
- No comment required.
NATO on Saturday urged Kosovo to dial down tensions with Serbia, a day after Kosovan government forcibly accessed municipal buildings to install elected ethnic Albanian mayors in ethnic Serb areas in the north of the country.
The resulting clashes on Friday between Kosovan police and protesters opposed to the mayors prompted Serbia to put its army on full combat alert and to move units closer to the border.
"We urge the institutions in Kosovo to de-escalate immediately and call on all parties to resolve the situation through dialogue," said Oana Lungescu, a NATO spokeswoman.
She said KFOR, the 3,800-strong NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, would remain vigilant.
- There is a real danger of these events spiralling out of control and generating war between Serbia and Kosovo.
Almost a decade after the end of a war there, ethnic Serbs in Kosovo's northern region do not accept Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia, and still see Belgrade as their capital.
- North Kosovo is run by drug gangs pretending to be politicians, like a lot of the Parliamentarians in the SNS.
The ethnic Serbian community boycotted municipal elections in April in protest that their demands for more autonomy had not been met, allowing ethnic Albanian candidates, who form more than 90 per cent of Kosovo's population but are a minority in the north, to take control of local councils.
Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti defended police actions in escorting the new mayors to their buildings on Friday.
- There is no rule of law whatsoever in North Kosovo.
"It is the right of those elected in democratic elections to assume office without threats or intimidation. It is also the right of citizens to be served by those elected officials," Mr Kurti said on Saturday.
- Well he's right, but he's stirring the situation.
Things were still tense in the north part of the country on Saturday, with heavily armed police forces in armoured vehicles guarding municipality buildings.
- North Kosovo is a tinderbox waiting to explode.
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