Kurir exposes the so-called Inquiry Committee: A pure political project of interest groups designed to keep the blockades going and deepen the crisis
Kurir could not have received a better confirmation of its reporting on the so-called Inquiry Committee for determining responsibility for the collapse of the canopy in Novi Sad than what was recently presented as the conclusion of this informal group of politically coloured individuals.
The role of lecturers from the Faculty of Civil Engineering
From the outset assembled problematically, without a clear initiator, without any source of authority, without a shred of legitimacy and accountability, and with more than questionable competence and objectivity, this inquiry committee concluded exactly what we had already predicted – that Aleksandar Vučić was to blame for everything. That was also the only thing they could, wanted and intended to conclude from the moment they appeared in public with a pompous name and title, which was obviously devised to mislead the public into thinking it was a body drawing its authority from some institution.
Kurir immediately exposed the background and motives behind inserting the Inquiry Committee into the blockade arsenal, and over time only received further confirmation that this was indeed yet another political project and instrument for stoking tensions in society, heating up the atmosphere during the blockades and self-promotion of individuals with unambiguous political ambitions.
Because of such a fundamentally flawed set-up and the deliberate bypassing of institutions, Kurir devoted due attention to the Inquiry Committee in order to show the full harmfulness of creating false authorities, following hidden motives and bypassing and dismantling state institutions. A group composed mainly of people close to the former government appeared as a new weapon of the blockaders precisely at the moment when the state and the university were trying to find ways to calm tensions and enable work to resume at faculties. However, it turned out that certain interests wanted at all costs to prevent an institutional resolution of the problem.
Kurir reported in detail on how launching the so-called Inquiry Committee shed light on many matters related to political intrusion into student protests and laid bare the true role and motives of certain individuals to constantly create confusion around the fulfilment of student demands. In our articles we paid particular attention to the role of Professor Vladan Kuzmanović of the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Belgrade, who dealt with construction issues within the Inquiry Committee. The faculty in question had a specific weight in organizing and channelling the blockades, and Kurir revealed that Kuzmanović played a key role in this, primarily in the business of artificially maintaining the university blockade despite the fulfilment of student demands. We publicly shared our findings that he, through students and the influence he had over them, practically dictated what the student demands would be, and then, when they were fulfilled, submitted additional ones, thus creating ever greater fog around what the students in blockade were asking for and what they had received.
In the end he sat on the so-called Inquiry Committee to supposedly analyses the entire documentation regarding the canopy, even though it was crystal clear in advance what he and everyone else involved in the task would conclude. They formulated it into a transparent political slogan and a sweeping accusation, which N1 and Nova carried under the headline: “The Inquiry Committee concludes that a criminal group is responsible for the collapse of the canopy: It is suspected that the President of the Republic is at its head, his associates must be examined.”
All with a political background
The political tone of this committee was dominant from the very beginning. Thus, one of its members was Professor of Law Tanasije Marinković, who became a member of the Republic Electoral Commission on behalf of the opposition list “Serbia Against Violence”. Legal matters were also covered by Savo Đurđić, a retired judge of the Appellate Court in Novi Sad, whose columns are regularly published by the daily Danas, owned by United Group. Also included was legal expert Sofija Mandić, who in 2022 was part of the team of the opposition party leader Zdravko Ponoš of the Srce party. Matters of economics and finance were handled by Professor of the Faculty of Economics Dejan Šoškić, who served as Governor of the National Bank of Serbia when the Democratic Party was in power. He worked together with Professor of the Faculty of Organisational Sciences Vladimir Obradović, known to the public as Đilas’s candidate for Mayor of Belgrade, as well as Ognjen Radonjić from the Faculty of Philosophy, who advocated for the independent participation of Đilas’s coalition “Serbia Against Violence” in the 2023 elections. This civic association also included retired Professor of Union University Vesna Rakić Vodinelić and retired Supreme Court judge of Serbia Vida Petrović Škero, both of whom signed the so-called “Appeal Against Hate Speech”, a letter of support to Đilas’s “Serbia Against Violence” in 2023.
Their work, media presence and particularly their conclusion showed that Kurir was on the right side of the truth when it exposed this political project and demonstrated with arguments that the group that self-proclaimed and falsely presented itself as an Inquiry Committee was in fact a mechanism of political struggle by certain interest groups, and that establishing the truth had never been its goal.
Kurir Editorial Team
