SERBIA: Transparent Elections? & more – 20th Feb 2024

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 20th of February twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Saturday the 17th, president Vucic attended the Munich Security Conference where he met with Jan Borg, the chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE. During the meeting, Vucic spoke about the December parliamentary elections, and said that they were democratic and transparent, denying the electoral fraud allegations he and his Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, are facing.

However, Vucic said that he is willing to talk with the EU about the alleged electoral fraud. He also added that he is eagerly awaiting the OSCE’s final report on December's elections. This report will feature recommendations for future elections, which the EU supports, and Vucic told Borg that he has called on the Government to consider them.

Moving on, EU officials have been talking about imposing sanctions on several hundred companies due to their ties with Russia— and some of them are based in Serbia. EU member states will vote on the sanction plan on Saturday the 24th, and if approved, some European companies will be banned from doing business with the sanctioned companies, including Serbian-based company Conex. This would be the first company in Serbia, and the Balkan region, to be included in the EU sanction package related to the Russian-Ukraine war.

The EU has accused Conex of aiding Russia in its war against Ukraine because the company exports electronics and components produced by Western companies to Russia.

Speaking of aid, president Vucic confirmed Russia’s delivery of arms to Serbia on the Serbian statehood day, Thursday the 15th. Despite international sanctions on Russia for its aggression on Ukraine, Serbia has accepted the delivery of Russian anti-drone systems, which is a ground-based electronic warfare system. Vucic boasted about the delivery, adding that the system is of excellent quality. He said that Serbia needs to be equipped with arms in case anyone tries to attack it. His mentions of potential threats mainly focus on Kosovo.

In more news about Russia, last week, Serbian PM Brnabic congratulated Tucker Carlson on his courage. Carlson is a US journalist who recently interviewed Russian president Vladimir Putin. Despite the international opinion on the interview being overall negative, with the critics saying that Carlson gave Putin a platform to peddle falsehoods, Serbian officials praised Carlson for allowing Putin to voice his side of the story. Brnabic said that by doing the interview, Carlson enabled the world to hear Putin without any censorship, which she said is “ubiquitous in today’s world.”

Want to listen to the full interview? Follow the link in the show notes!

The relationship between Croatia and Serbia seems to be deteriorating, as the participants of the International Carnival Parade near the city of Split, Croatia, burned an effigy of President Vucic. On Tuesday the 13th, participants portrayed Vucic and Putin as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on donkeys, after which they threw their dolls in the fire. Despite the Parade’s tradition of burning effigies and mocking politicians, Serbian officials heavily condemned the burning, with the country’s head of diplomacy accusing Croatia of spreading hate and ruining their good-neighborly relations with Serbia. Certain Croatian diplomatic sources ridiculed Serbian officials for responding in such a way, adding that the parade traditions do not determine the relationship between the two nations.

Also on Tuesday the 13th, Serbia and the United Arab Emirates, or UAE, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the development and application of AI. PM Brnabic, who attended the signing at the World Government Summit in Dubai, said that the UAE had developed its own AI language model, which is practically equivalent to the US-based ChatGPT. Brnabic pointed out that the Memorandum of Understanding allows Serbian scientific institutes, startups, and other entities to use the UAE AI language model, which will help them in their research and work.

The Serbian Ministry of Education introduced changes to the education Rulebook, which will give parents more control over the teachers’ work practices. The amendments will enable parents to monitor educators’ teaching and grading methods. If parents don’t like them, they can file a complaint, which will go to the school’s principal, who will push for changes in the schooling methods until the parents feel they are appropriate. Many trade unions are concerned that the amendments to the Rulebook could lead to parents abusing their rights. Representatives of the Independence trade union said that by giving the parents so much power in their children's schooling, the Rulebook is undermining the teachers’ authority.

In some news about the environment, on Tuesday the 13th, villagers of Krivelj in eastern Serbia protested against the environmental degradation that the Chinese mining giant Zijin Copper is inflicting. Back in twenty eighteen Zijin Copper promised that it would invest more than a billion dollars in a mining project in Krivelj. However, many villagers complained about the pollution that the mining was producing, endangering their lives and health. They protested by blocking the road used for supplying the raw materials to the mine, which forced Zijin Copper to temporarily suspend production. The company confirmed this in a statement, in which they also called on the villagers, local authorities, and the government to resolve the road blockade.

The news outlet Financial Times published a twenty twenty-four report on Thursday the 15th called European Cities and Regions of the Future. They ranked 330 cities in Europe by how appealing they are to investors on a scale from one to ten, where one is the lowest and ten is the highest. They divided the cities into five groups. In the small city category, the Financial Times ranked the town of Leskovac in the south of Serbia as the most attractive small city to investors judging by cost-effectiveness. In the large city category, Belgrade placed seventh based on human capital and lifestyle. Krakow in Poland ranked first and Antwerp in Belgium last.

Still on Thursday the 15th, the National Association of Parents of Children with Cancer, or NURDOR, spoke on International Childhood Cancer Day. NURDOR said that the annual number of new cases of cancer in children had been around 350 in recent years, with the most common types being leukemias, brain tumors, bone and joint tumors, and lymphomas. They demanded that the state create a national pediatric cancer registry.

On a more positive note, the 52nd FEST International Film Festival will take place from the 23rd of February to the 3rd of March, where visitors will be able to watch more than a hundred films from sixty different countries. The festival will screen different films at four different locations; in the MTS Hall, the Cineplexx Usce, the Cineplexx Gallery, and Belgrade’s House of Youth. Some of the directors whose films will be featured include Woody Allen, Alexander Payne, and Akio Kaurismaki. Some of the films announced for the festival include Oscar contenders Barton Academy, Zone of Interest, and Anatomy of the Fall. You can buy your tickets where the films will be screened or you can purchase them online. For more information, check out the link in the show notes.

Thank you so much to everyone that filled in the survey over the past few weeks, we really appreciate your comments and ideas. Many of you mentioned you would like to get some more in depth episodes and interviews, is that something you would like? Do you have any topics in mind? Something specific about that you want to know more about for us to do a special show on? We want to do some new things very soon! Please email us at info@rorshok.com. The survey is still linked in the show notes if you are interested in that as well.

Do daljnjeg, zbogom!