
Before the publication of the European Commission’s report on Serbia’s progress, Minister for European Integration Jadranka Joksimovic told RTS that she is aware of how much the non-imposition of sanctions has changed Serbia’s image in the world and that she is aware that it is costing us a lot, but that it would cost “not the government, but the country”, even if they didn’t listen to what the citizens think.
This position was repeated yesterday by incumbent Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, saying that she remains committed to the position that sanctions against Russia are not in Serbia’s best national interest.
– Nor is it something our people support because it has been subject to sanctions and we know how much people are suffering, Brnabić said.
Indeed, the majority of Serbian citizens, about 80 percent of them, according to public opinion surveys, oppose sanctions against the Russian Federation, and it is known that the president of the SNS, Aleksandar Vučić, who also serves as the president of Serbia, is regularly reported on the national pulse. Even twice a week, as he himself has said, which can be interpreted as his fear of a ratings downgrade, so he first tests his decisions with polls, and it seems that the final decision on sanctions cannot be delayed much longer.
In such circumstances, the question arises whether the imposition of sanctions would cause the ruling party and its leader to suffer a drastic drop in their ratings, since after a “political transformation”, Vucic has managed to make the idea of the Europeanisation of Serbia acceptable to the former radicals, and has since overridden a number of personal and side issues.
The research and publishing centre Demostat says that the task of serious state-building political elites is not to conform to public opinion, but to take difficult decisions in the interests of citizens and the country.
Since the SNS has been in power, especially since 2014, the level of anti-Western and pro-Putin sentiment has increased significantly and now, according to Demostat, it is a victim of propaganda by the pro-government media, television with national frequency, printed tabloids, including the public service.
Demostat states that the isolation of Serbia by the West and the EU would not harm the SNS and Vucic so much in the short term, but in the medium and long term it would cause irreparable losses to the citizens and the country. For, they add, everything depends on the political will of Vučić.
Whoever was responsible for something like this would never recover from the blow,” Demostat stresses.
Predrag Lacmanovic, Executive Director of Faktor plus, tells Danas that the sanctions will not happen overnight.
– Public opinion needs to be prepared for such a big decision. I am not saying that citizens are being manipulated, but it must be made clear to them that there are certain consequences that, if something happens, the whole country will have to suffer, along with the citizens. No matter how much our citizens have feelings towards Russia, a negative attitude towards the imposition of sanctions, because we have already experienced something like this, or there is a fear of sanctions and of investors leaving, if the citizens are warned and if they are given a proper explanation of what this means for their lives and their children’s lives, for their economic future, then it can be amortised, that is to say, it does not have a significant impact on the party’s rating. And maybe the President of the SNS and Serbia is ready to lower the rating at least a little for the sake of Serbian interests – says Lacmanović.
According to him, Vučić can win with that.
– “On the other hand, with a wise policy, if imposing sanctions means that, he still gets points on another side that he didn’t have before. Because politics is a field where there is always a solution, where you can win and where you can lose – Lacmanović concludes./Danas