Belgrade, 27.04,2020.
PUBLIC STATEMENT
Concerning the upcoming boycott and protest
Forum for Security and Democracy views the announced boycott of tomorrow’s session of the National Assembly by Savez za Srbiju (Alliance for Serbia) MP members with deep regret and extreme concern and we strongly condemn the announcing of protests they planned for Thursday at 6 p.m. – at the very time that curfew comes into effect!
Forum for Security and Democracy notes that these AfS announcements are not merely cowardly and politically inept under the current circumstances but also dishonorable, considering the fact that this session of the National Assembly was scheduled in order to ratify the installment of the state of emergency as well as discuss and possibly approve various acts that impair and restrict various civil rights in a public setting after the reassessment of their necessity by the National Assembly, as the Constitution dictates!
Even though Forum for Security and Democracy acknowledges the scores of objections that are rightfully raised to the executive branch, regarding the session’s agenda, we wish to point out that the only possible worse option other then proceeding by this agenda, in spite of all the critiques and raising of issues with said agenda, is the one AfS opted for when they elected not to participate in the Assembly session! Citizens of Serbia have every right to express their displeasure with the workings of the National Assembly in front of the assembly building itself, but it is the duty (and privilege!) of their elected representatives to do so from the inside by taking part in its deliberations!
It is Forum for Security and Democracy’s view that AfS, with its flaunting of their refusal to represent citizens of Serbia, at the very Assembly session at which some of their most basic civil rights are being discussed no less, acquiesces to the trampling those very rights of the people that elected those assembly members, now aligned with AfS, o be the custodians of those rights.
Regarding the AfS announcement of protests for Thursday, at the very beginning of the scheduled curfew, it is the Forum for Security and Democracy’s position that these protests are a danger to all of Serbia’s citizens. Not only do these protests represent an undeniable health risk, but FSD also sees their announcement as overtly reckless behavior that is, at this time, unambiguously and openly directed towards provoking a clash between the police and assembly members!
Forum for Security and Democracy warns that such AfS’s undisguised desire for disarray and confrontation pushes the entire country, all of society and Serbia’s democracy into a Chernobyl scenario for which they have no exit strategy. Far from endangering the regime, as they supposedly claim, such actions would make them the staunchest ally and biggest accomplice of those parts of the ruling coalition that aren’t even trying to veil their advocacy against Serbia’s membership in the EU.
Forum for Security and Democracy underlines that such acts go against democracy and against security, as do the plans of AfS and other foreign interests to violently demonstrate Serbia’s ineptitude to resolve social and political disagreements through institutional mechanisms. Such plans would unambiguously, for the long haul, irreversibly and by design thrust Serbia towards anti-democratic, Asiatic and anti-European political concepts.
Forum for Security and Democracy publicly appeals and beseeches those assembly members hailing from AfS that do not favor such concepts to reconsider AfS’s course of action and to answer the call of duty that is solely theirs and attend the upcoming National Assembly members as representatives of the people! Any other actions that they have announced, and might be planning, could result in serious legal and incomprehensibly dire political repercussions!
Finally, all of the above being said, it is completely unfathomable why this alleged protest against the sidelining of the National Assembly is being announced over a month after a state of emergency has been proclaimed and what is the point of announcing the filing of a case regarding the state of emergency before the Constitutional court when such an initiative was already submitted by several members of the Serbian Bar Association weeks ago?!
Just as baffling is the AfS’s reasoning to protest against the sidelining of the National Assembly that they are refusing to take part in?!?
