Dragana Rakić: Nobody in the DS wants Tadić for president – Politika

Photo: FoNet / Nenad Djordjevic

The session of our highest party body is scheduled for May 31, and that session, in accordance with the party’s actions, was scheduled by the party’s authorized, legal and legitimate bodies. A group of dissatisfied and mostly senior party officials, supported by the regime’s media and Health Minister Zlatibor Loncar, tried to present their initiative to convene the session on May 17 as if the session were actually scheduled. It is an attempt at deception. There are no legal, political or health security conditions for that session, and the initiative makes no sense, as the session is regularly scheduled for May 31. What are the decisions that cannot be made on May 31, but must be made 14 days before, no one is trying to explain, Dragana Rakić, vice president of the Democratic Party, told Danas.

* Who is in a hurry and why?

– Aleksandar Vučić is in a hurry, because he is trying in every way to get the DS out of the elections to give legitimacy to his bogus elections, which he planned for June 21. In that intention, he found partners within the DS, who have their own personal goal, without any responsibility towards the future of the citizens of Serbia. It seems that individuals cannot imagine their lives without the parliamentary salary and other privileges that this work brings in the National Assembly.

* Who are these individuals?

– That is very easy to determine. It is enough to see which of the Democrats has more space in the regime’s media and only speak in a negative context about the current leadership of the DS and, above all, about President Zoran Lutovac. Radoslav Milojicic Kena is certainly leading the way in these attacks, which, after all, makes no secret that his goal is to “destroy Lutovac” in a bogus OSC session. As a reminder, two years ago, in the party’s internal elections, Democrats did not elect Milojicic as vice president, just as they did not elect Gordana Comic as president, whom Milojicic supported at the time. Comic is no longer a member of the DS, because he is on the list of another political organization, and Milojicic, although formally a member of the DS, does everything that pleases and benefits Aleksandar Vucic and the SNS.

* What are your main objections to Lutovac, apart from the boycott of the elections and the SZS?

– There is nothing to complain about President Lutovac. Since becoming president of the DS, he has always put the interests of the citizens of Serbia first, even before the interests of the DS itself. Lutovac is a man of reconciliation and integration. It initiated parallel and complementary political processes: the expansion and strengthening of the party and the unification of all opposition parties and movements. The decision to form the SZS and the decision to boycott were made by party organs with a large majority. Lutovac and the current leadership were mandated to follow exactly this policy: the SD revitalization policy and the policy in the interest of all Serbian citizens.

* How is it possible that among the opponents of the DS president are his vice-presidents like Aleksandra Jerkov? Are you the only Vice President loyal to Lutovac?

– It is obvious that Aleksandra Jerkov joined those who are trying to replace President Lutovac. She is the only one of the party’s vice presidents who deviated from the policy we advocated in the campaign for the party’s internal elections and for which we gained the trust of our members. What are your motives for that, I don’t know, and I won’t guess. All party members and officials have a democratic right to evaluate the work of party representatives and to propose or request the removal of someone, but Jerkov also has no right to publicly ask citizens not to participate in protests in Novi Sad. organized by the DS city organization along with other SZS members. . That is really outrageous.

* However, those who want the removal of the DS president claim that he made many mistakes in the past two years and that he acted as an autocrat in the DS.

– The only “mistake” of Lutovac is that he does not agree with the calculation and intermediation policy that, unfortunately, is common in our area and because he puts the interest of Serbia before the interest of Aleksandar Vučić and his political partners in the DS. At DS we are truly proud that a man of high moral and human qualities is at our command. Because to be a good politician, a necessary condition is to be a good man. It doesn’t go any other way.

* Lutovac’s opponents, however, claim that his goal is to resolve the situation in the DS and eventually unite with the Social Democratic Party.

– The DS reintegration process was started by Lutovac and he is more interested in successfully completing that process. Unfortunately, the unification process is carried out under very unfavorable circumstances and with numerous obstructions that have hitherto come from both our party and Boris Tadic’s. Our former party officials saw the unification as an opportunity to regain hopelessly lost influence in the party by gaining the support of his old friends and Tadic’s closest associates, who had abandoned him in the meantime. You can see that from the fact that even before unification, they immediately determined that Marko Đurišić would be the president of our joint party. We want that process to end. Unfortunately, we are not encouraged by the recent appearances of Tadic, who is trying to impose some of his ideas quite aggressively, which are not in line with what we agreed and agreed to in the SZS and the so-called boycott alliance.

* Is there any intention of Boris Tadic returning to the helm of the DS?

– I really don’t know if someone is trying to nominate Boris Tadic for the post of DS president again, but I know it won’t happen because almost nobody in the DS wants it. This may sound harsh and un-diplomatic, but I have to say it that way, because it is true. After all, the possibility that Tadic was the chair of the DS was never considered again during the unification agreement.

* Will it appear on Sunday at the DS CSO session, which was hosted by a third of CSO members, at least out of curiosity?

– No OSC session will take place on Sunday, May 17. There are no legal, political or health security conditions for that session. The initiative to hold this session was not presented in the prescribed manner, because it did not have the support of at least a third of the CSO members. The list of those who allegedly supported the initiative includes the names of the people who officially informed the Party Secretariat that their signatures were invalid and the people who were not party members. I cannot describe my surprise when I saw that the president of the SVM municipal board in one place in Vojvodina was among the alleged signatories. What kind of people are they who, with the help of forged and invalid signatures, are trying to cheat in such a blatant way in their party? I am truly horrified by people’s behavior and their willingness to dishonestly and illegally follow their personal agendas.

* Among those who signed the initiative for the Main Board session on Sunday are Professors Dragoljub Mićunović and Vida Ognjenović.

– I suppose that Professor Mićunović and Vida Ognjenović were among the signatories of the initiative with the desire to continue the dialogue in the party on all the political problems that we are currently facing. Professor Mićunović and Ms. Vida Ognjenović have always been fighters for equality and for words to be measured not by who said them, but by what they mean. It is the same with the facts. So it was, and so it will be in the future.

* According to the statute of the DS, can Lutovac be replaced if he does not come to the session and present a report on his work?

– There is an “impossible condition” in your question. It will not and cannot happen that the DS chair does not come to the OSC session on purpose and does not present a report. Therefore, what the party statute says about the hypothetical situation it mentions is irrelevant. Lutovac will not and cannot be replaced as long as he has the support of the majority of CSO members and the majority of party members. That support is now clear and obvious. Even this interest group that is trying to overthrow him has never and never said that it has the support of the majority of the party members. They ask Lutovac to hold them accountable, as they say, because they probably perceive themselves as a party, and not those thousands of our party colleagues who have been attacked and beaten countless times, like our party colleague Ana, formerly an afternoon in front of parliament and across the country, Vučić’s supporters savagely attacked. The moment Ana was slapped on the cheek by the slap, this self-proclaimed party elite met and agreed to take over Ana’s party and the other Democrats.

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