Korać: Serbia enters a phase of political instability

(Patria) - Serbia is entering a phase of political instability that has just begun and will not stop, but it is very difficult to say which direction it will take, says in an interview for Geopost Žarko Korać, psychologist and former Vice President of the Government of Serbia in the Cabinet of Zoran Đinđić.

“This nervousness that Vučić is showing is not only because of these monstrous crimes in Serbia, but also because time is running out for him on the Kosovo issue. He has already received a warning – a text in the New York Times, which is an independent, intellectual, liberal newspaper, the most influential American newspaper outside the US. So, he received a warning that it is still known what he is doing, and the nervousness is great: he has the Kosovo problem, loss of control over what is happening in the country, these crimes, of course, and thirdly, he has a rather bad economic situation in the country.”

“The largest gathering in history” that Vučić announced for May 26, according to Korać, is a sign that the Serbian president has become afraid of losing power.

“First of all, with this rally, which is sad, he is reviving the tradition of Slobodan Milošević, who had those big rallies. One of them was at Ušće when the writer Vitezović said ‘the people have happened’ and this is the happening of the people for the second time. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.”

Korać also assesses that no one has controlled the Serbs in Kosovo as much as Vučić.

“Perhaps Milošević at the beginning of his rule, but that was a different situation; Kosovo was not declared independent at that time, it was still technically part of Serbia and the then Yugoslavia.”

The interlocutor of Geopost believes that Vučić made a cardinal mistake by blackmailing the West and Pristina by withdrawing Serbs from all institutions.

“Serbs were in the government, parliament, municipal presidents… He caused a huge crisis thinking that the West would be faced with a fait accompli and that the West would force Kurti to make the Community of Serbian Municipalities look the way he wants, not perhaps the way Kurti would do it.”

Korać is convinced that Vučić has no intention of accepting and implementing the Ohrid Plan.

“Vučić has no intention of implementing the Ohrid Agreement; any solution to the Kosovo issue loses him in the eyes of his voters. And he thinks exclusively about his voters. Vučić conducts so-called focus groups twice a day, which is unique, I have never heard of anyone doing that. He tests his political loyalists both in the morning and in the afternoon, and he knows that he will lose with any solution to the Kosovo issue.”

Serbia, Korać points out, has lost the Russian card, and Vučić sees that. “He actually has no political support anywhere. Paradoxically, he is still most supported by the US and part of Europe, expecting him to make some rational move, which is to finally make some agreement with Kurti. And the West, I miss the right word, in psychology we have an expression shaping – they constantly try to shape him, in Serbian you would say ‘they are coaxing him’, in my opinion quite without results.”

Korać states that neither for the West nor for Europe are we a priority region.

“At this moment, the most important thing for the West is that there is no armed conflict, and that is a terribly low expectation from the region.”