Journalist Djordje Vlajic assesses the appearance of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic at the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) Assembly as “some kind of demanding the complicity of the Church in the work that he does with Kosovo”.
“I have the impression that it is being done completely outside the institution. The head of state, in the function that he performs and what is written in the Constitution, is not the bearer of the executive power. This should be done by the government that conducts politics in the country,” Vlajic told N1 this morning.
He assesses as a “common place” that the Church is one of the interlocutors of power in social life, but he points out that “Serbia is a secular state where the elected government decides.”
Vlajic says that it is good to hear the opinion of the SPC, but “this was already seriously beyond every tolerable measure”.
“The head of state was going to submit a report to the bishops about the negotiations on Kosovo … Or he went to gain those bishops who were against him, which I believe will not happen unless he is running for a patriarch, and that would not surprise me”, said Vlajic.
Speaking about the functioning of the SPC, Vlajic recalls that bishops are autonomous and that “the patriarch is only the first among equals”.
“I do not see the space for such an influence of the Church, and efforts for it to be one of the partners in solving the most important social issues,” says Vlajic.
Milivojevic: It is more suitable for the president to appear in the Serbian Assembly
Political analyst Cvijetin Milivojevic said that he thought it would be more appropriate for the president Vucic to appear in the Assembly.
“Unless the goal of the president is to try to convince a part of the members of the SPC Assembly, that is, a part of the bishops, to give up from what is more than the clear position of the Church,” he said and added:
“Because if he took the right to talk, i.e. that his negotiations would go through a road that was not actually defined by the Constitution of Serbia, and as you know, there is written that Kosovo is an autonomous province within Serbia, then it is logical informing the people’s representatives about it , that is, the legislative authority,” said Milivojevic.
As Milivojevic says, after all, “he owes that to them”.
“Because, as you know, the topic of Kosovo was on the agenda only once since the coalition of the SNS and the SPS is in power, it was immediately after the Brussels agreement, the first one, that is, six years ago,” he says.
