31.05.2022.
President Vučić takes oath of office
The President of the Republic of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić was sworn in today for his second presidential term at the 11th Special Sitting of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, 12th convocation.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Nebojša Stefanović, PhD, and the Chief of the Serbian Armed Forces General Staff, General Milan Mojsilović were also in attendance."Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Holiness, Dear Mr. Speaker, Distinguished Members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Madame President of Republika Srpska, Distinguished Representatives of Religious Communities, Dear Friends, Dear Presidents of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Your Excellencies, Presidents of the Constitutional Court and Supreme Court of Cassation, Dear Prime Minister, Distinguished members of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, President of the Provincial Assembly of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, President of the Provincial Government of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, there is no greater honour, no greater responsibility, or greater pride than to lead one’s country and to proudly represent it.
The citizens have given me all that in the election - the responsibility, the duty, the honour, and the pride. That was the will of the convincing majority, which has again entrusted me and the majority of you with doing what is in the best interest of Serbia.
I want to be the president of all and the president for all, to be the first in terms of responsibilities and the last in terms of privileges, to work harder, not to request anything for myself, but to request absolutely everything for our Serbia.
The great Confucius said that one can compromise on everything, except on ideals, and that is what I intend to do, and my ideals are Serbia and the well-being of its citizens. This also determines the priorities of my second term, which were publicly known and clear even before this swearing in ceremony and read: peace, stability, independence in decision-making, Serbia’s freedom, security, health, Europe, work, work and work.
Let me paraphrase Marcus Aurelius, the emperor and philosopher, Serbia is and will be exactly what we make it. It is the product of our thoughts, our dreams and our deeds; it is our ideal, our goal, our awareness of where we are in geographical and historical terms and we should take great care not to confuse, as we have many times in history, history and reality, geography and reality, wishes and reality.
Today, I have the honour, but also obligation to address you as the president whose second term begins at a crucial time in modern history. There is no more difficult or more sublime duty than the one I am assuming for the second time today. And there is no goal that is more demanding or more honourable than to keep Serbia on the path to the future it has long deserved for all the sacrifices it has made.
I am taking the office at a time when the central premise, almost worldwide, is that insolence and rudeness are acts of courage, and calmness and patience are expressions of fear. We live in times when everyone speaks loudly, but few listen and even fewer hear. The voices of reason are becoming quieter, and the vision of the future of mankind is becoming hazier and more distant.Today, perhaps more than ever, the whole world yearns for truth and justice. The justice mentioned in the first verse of our beautiful national anthem, which remains an imperative without which there is no progress for a dignified man or the whole world. I will always strive hard for such truth and such justice, because there is no harder, but no more honourable way than that.
The world might never be the same again, but at least we will try to remain strong, confident and unwavering in our principles, we as a country will continue to work towards the common good, moving bravely forward despite all adversity, as we have done so far.
Therefore, there is no word good enough to describe our Serbia, which has always stood at the crossroads of different civilizations, religions and cultures that have enriched Serbia in the best way. This encourages us to strive harder than ever before to preserve this heritage. Also, Serbia has always been the place where the paths of other people's interests and ambitions have crossed, where conquests and withdrawals have taken place, but also our victories and defeats, leaving deep scars in the entire existence of Serbia. Many have come to this country without respect and consideration, and left secretly or openly admiring our small, yet great nation, and our small, yet proud Serbia.
Just like Miroslav’s Gospel here before me, our country has had a strange and difficult historical path. Generations of Serbs have toughened over many centuries, often alone, but always upright. Those generations, which showed incredible human, ruling, artistic, military, moral and spiritual virtues throughout history, instilled this indomitable, freedom-loving, sometimes even defiant spirit into all present and future generations of our people.
Speaking in more concrete terms, the world is changing dramatically before our eyes on a daily basis, it has never changed so much and so fast. The attack on Ukraine is a turning point in international relations. On the one hand, Russia wanted to end the domination of the so-called Western hard and soft powers, to prevent further expansion of NATO, China does not want the status quo, namely it does not want Western powers to be untouchable and all others without any influence, and on the other hand, the West wants to maintain its own supremacy in the world, referring to violations of public international law, both by Russia and their other opponents, such as the People's Republic of China.
It is true that the attack on Ukraine has violated the public international law, but it is also true that it has happened dozens of times in the modern world, and that the key protagonists and today's great advocates of compliance with the norms of public international law were often Western powers. After all, the people in Serbia can confirm that. Our country was attacked in 1999 without the United Nations Security Council’s approval, even though Serbia had not previously occupied the territory of any other country. After that, they continued to rob our country. Despite the existence of Resolution 1244, they still robbed us of part of our territory, claiming that they are right, and if we said we thought differently, they accused us of not looking to the future, of not being democrats enough, of not understanding the present, of being obsessed with the past. If anyone would do that, they would immediately be accused of destroying the international legal order, all institutions and world peace.Today, I am proud of Serbia which acts in accordance with the principles of public international law, which condemns violations of public international law, unequivocally and openly. But I am also proud of Serbia’s behaviour which is neither anti-Western nor anti-Russian. Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Goethe and Hemingway are welcome here. This is something that Serbia can be proud of, even if it was one of the few countries in the modern world.
I have said all this as the President of the Republic, to save my soul and pour out my heart, just as any other citizens of Serbia would do. And don't think that I don't know what you all know. I do, I often know better than everyone else. I can often see it and feel it better than anyone else. But that will not solve our current problem or any other problem in the future. The politics of running a country is not a politics of desires, but a politics of the possible, a politics of reality.
I have talked to one of Europe’s greatest leaders. We talked for seven hours and I guess he wanted to listen to me and I felt the need to tell him everything that was on my mind - how we Serbs feel about what they did to us regarding Kosovo and Metohija and regarding all other issues in the Balkans. That great leader of a big country, who is much smarter and more knowledgeable than me, listened to me carefully and around three in the morning he said to me: "Okay, Aleksandar, let's wrap this up. I do not agree with you about everything, but let’s say that you are right about 80, or even 90 percent of what you have said. And what do we do now? You run a country, you are the president of the country, you are smart enough to know that, regardless of the many injustices in the world, there are things that will not change. You cannot change my country’s position. We could regret later, but we will never admit it, because the great ones do not admit it. For us, tears of remorse and mistakes do not exist, they are reserved for you, smaller countries. It remains to be seen what you can do to save your country in the future. It remains to be seen what you can do, to secure a future for the young generations in your country, what you can accept as reality and what we can do together.” That was the first time I heard a Western leader say, although not directly, something like: "Okay, we're not always happy with everything we've done in the past, but you have to come to terms with that." At least we got something. That night, I got at least some kind of personal satisfaction, which, of course, means nothing to our country. But that great leader was right when he said that we must look to the future, that we must think about our children’s future, because they are not obliged to pay the debts of our generation, or the debts of their grandparents, or their great-grandparents or anyone else. We must leave them a healthy situation, so that they do not have to worry about potential wars in the future or to face any instabilities and problems.
That being the case, I want to say that I am looking forward to the calling of a new parliament soon, I hope that all electoral activities will be completed soon and I will ignore absurd claims about me choosing which parliament to take the oath before. I am taking office today, on May 31, so this is the only day when I can take the oath. What can you do? Whatever you do, you can never make everyone happy.
Forming a new government is of crucial importance, and given the difficult situation we are in, we must all think about it together today. I cannot do that alone, although I have received great support from the people. The government needs to do it, and it will certainly be done by the government that has full legitimacy and not the government in a technical mandate.
We have to deal with new sanctions and what not, which can be harmful for us again, so we will have to ask our European partners to help us with that issue. In accordance with that, I expect the new Government of Serbia to be formed by the end of July, and I will be happy to hold extensive consultations with representatives of all political parties that will be represented in the National Assembly as soon as the new National Assembly is formed.I am convinced that the new Government will accept some of my requests and advice. I believe that the prime minister-designate will make a decision to include as many representatives of minorities in the government as possible. Besides Serbs, our government should include Hungarians, Bosniaks, Croats, Roma and representatives of other nationalities who wish this country well and who have only one homeland - Serbia, which they love immensely, just as we do, and who intend to live here together with their children, just as we do.
I know that in formal and legal terms they are called national minorities, although I do not like that term. I want to thank the representatives of national minorities, those wonderful citizens who do not belong to the national majority, but who have always stood with Serbia and helped Serbia in good times and bad, and solved all the problems and troubles we were faced with together with us.
What I expect from the new government, and what I will devote myself to in particular as the President of the Republic, is our European path in the first place. I'm sorry, I know I won't get applause for something like that, and that is why I will devote most of my speech to that topic. Sometimes I am stubborn, grumpy, sometimes boastful, but not because I want to score some points for myself, on the contrary, that kind of behaviour does not bring you any points, but because I think I am doing a good thing for Serbia.
When we speak about Europe, we use it as a byword, as something that we can criticize and attack most easily. But at the end of the day, we think about seeking support and help from it again the next day. Although they are not always fair to us, and that is my personal opinion, particularly when it comes to their political demands, we are not fair to them either. We don’t find it hard to accept the EU taxpayers’ money, we feel good about that, and we never even say thank you to them. But we do find it hard to accept criticism.
The European Union must not be a byword, it must not be a word that has become part of our vocabulary just like that. It must be something we gravitate towards. Precisely because of trade exchange, investments, but also because we want to be part of that type of community, and we will have to work a lot on the rule of law, further democratization of our society, media freedom and everything else. Of course, they exaggerate when they say that different opinions cannot be heard here, of course they sometimes use it for political purpose, but it is true that we can always do better, not for their sake, but for our own.
And now we come to what I have promised today, and what is enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia. We come to the key political issue for us, the issue of Kosovo and Metohija. The issue of Kosovo and Metohija in juxtaposition with the Ukrainian crisis will be even more prominent and even more difficult for us to resolve. No matter what any representative of a Western country tells you, Kosovo and Metohija will become an even larger and more important topic precisely because of what President Putin has recently said.
They will tell you that this is not the case, that there is no similarity between Kosovo and other crises in the world, they will keep telling you that again and again. But even though they keep saying it, you can tell that it bothers them. That is exactly why we will come face to face with it. I apologize to you and to those who are listening to this for telling the truth. Do they really think that I am so naive? When they tell me ten times that it does not concern them and that it is not a problem for them, do they really think that I, a political veteran, will buy it? I can see how much it hurts them. But just try to imagine how much it hurts us, how much it hurts Serbia and everyone in this country. We have to withstand constant pressure in order for you to satisfy your interests, without thinking for a second about our interests. We have a problem there and we do not have anyone to talk to in our effort to work out a compromise.I know that no one wants to hear this in Serbia, but we must seek a compromise. We must strive for a compromise. We must protect our people in Kosovo and Metohija. We must look after the lives of our people, our elderly, their children and grandchildren who still live in Kosovo and Metohija, who still love the Serbian flag, who still speak the Serbian language. That is why we must seek a compromise.
Speaking of that, they still refuse to implement their court decision to return to the Serbian monastery Visoki Dečani what belongs to it and no one is worried about that. For the first time, the Quint has issued a statement criticizing the decision of the Albanian rulers in Pristina not to allow Serbs to vote in Serbia’s presidential and parliamentary elections. But the criticism did not have a long-lasting effect. The day after that, the Albanians in Kosovo returned to their old ways, because they will always have the support from the Quint and no one should have any illusions about that.
And now we come to a related issue. Can we really expect understanding and acceptance of our arguments when we say – wait, do you expect us to take an equally strong stand against the Russian Federation? Even if we leave aside our traditional ties and good relations with Russia and the fact that we do not have a problem with gas supply, how can they, who insist on territorial integrity and the protection of territorial integrity as the supreme principle of public international law, ask us Serbs to disrespect this principle and treat the Russian Federation even worse than they do, because of the current world events? At the same time, they will not side with us in the United Nations Security Council on the issue of our territorial integrity, because – who cares about Serbia’s territorial integrity?
I only ask the representatives of those countries to be at least fair to Serbia and say - we understand the difficult position you are in, no problem, but we are forcing you to do that. It is a language we can understand. It does not mean that we will do as they say, but it is a language that is much less hypocritical than the one telling us that it is justice, that it is fair and just, because if it were fair, honest and just, they would not have so easily destroyed the territorial integrity of Serbia as they did.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I know what it is that people like, so I repeat, I have said this to save my soul. Yes, I do have a soul, contrary to what many people think. I know these things better than most, if not all, but tomorrow we must have enough gas, we must have enough food, we must have new hospitals and new factories and we must maintain good relations with our Western partners and be firmly on the European path.
Another reason why the new government must be formed quickly is because Serbia needs to deal with the forthcoming winter and energy supply urgently. The situation is alarming and that is why it is important that we form the government as soon as possible, so that we can dedicate ourselves to addressing those issues, so that we can set aside a large amount of money and provide security for the citizens of Serbia next winter.
We have stable public finance thanks to the entire Government, the Ministry of Finance, the National Bank of Serbia, thanks to good work and stability that we have maintained all the time. It is of great importance for us to preserve that stability.
Food. We have and we will have enough food. All attempts to destabilize the Serbian market will fail because we are deceiving no one. We are not lying to anyone when we say that we have enough sugar, oil, wheat, sunflower, corn and everything else that we need for a normal and decent life.
Serbia is facing big, crucial reforms that will be painful for many - from introducing a much more serious and responsible policy in the energy, education and science sectors, which must be the essence, the pillar of Serbia's progress in the future. In that regard, I would like to ask the Government not to be afraid of the reactions regarding a more comprehensive and more thorough introduction of dual education in our educational system, because everyone has been evading it. It is easy to wait for your next pay check and wonder how much money the Ministry of Finance can provide, unaware that we lag far behind Germany, Austria, Switzerland, unaware of the fact that we are not ready to change ourselves, yet we are ready to change everyone else.
We will continue to invest in health care, because health care is becoming one of the pillars of development and survival of our nation. Further digitization, development of robotics, artificial intelligence, but also response to climate change and environmental protection. We have entered significant energy security, safety and environmental protection projects with numerous partners, from Norway and the EU, to the United States, which need to be intensified.
As for our armed forces, I will use my influence as the supreme commander to make them stronger, to help them become the guarantor of security, peace, and stability. We have heard countless times over the past several months that Serbia will allegedly attack someone, that the Serbian Armed Forces will threaten someone. They have lied for days, weeks, for ninety-six days of the Ukrainian crisis. For ninety-six days. You could read those lies every day, a hundred times and in a hundred places. And after ninety-six days, no one has yet apologized to us. Nobody has said – sorry, we have lied from day one, thank you, Serbia for acting as a pillar of stability, for not endangering anyone, for not asking for anything except to be the owner of your own territory, to have the right to protect its freedom, its sky and its soil, on your own, without anyone's help.
Dear friends, I am convinced that Serbia will jealously guard its military neutrality. We are not politically neutral. We are on the European path and we know what our responsibilities are, but we must preserve our military neutrality. We are surrounded by either NATO countries or territories where NATO bases are located. There is no territory, entity or country other than Serbia that is not part of NATO.
Serbia is like a small island and some consider this a problem. But let me ask you, why is trusting your people a problem? Our people, who carry heroic genes, think that we will be able to protect our country and they do not want to belong to any military bloc, they just want us to have the right to guard our borders, to guard our country, to have our own soldiers and to protect our skies, so why wouldn’t we believe them? Today, Serbia is financially stronger and more capable of defending itself than it was before. Today’s Serbia would not be easy prey for anyone, as it unfortunately was in 1999, despite our big hearts.
And that is something I am proud of. So, we are attacking no one, we are threatening no one, but I guarantee you one thing, no one will ever again dare attack Serbia so easily, pursuing their geopolitical interests, not because they no longer dislike Serbia or because they no longer pursue the same interests, but because Serbia is stronger. And it is stronger thanks to the people and citizens of Serbia who have invested in their armed forces, who have believed in their armed forces and who know that the path of neutrality is the path leading the Republic of Serbia and its citizens into the future.It is also important that salaries and pensions will grow, inflation must not erode them. Imported inflation, mostly imported inflation, must not eat away at their incomes, because we have fought for a better standard of living for the citizens, and the Government will have to work hard on that issue, and pensions will follow salaries.
There is another thing that is also important, something that we have no future without. Let me make a joke at our expense. When we appear on television, all of us, presidents, prime ministers, ministers, analysts, critics, everyone, we always say: "Look, our villages are deserted. Go back to the villages”. But eventually, we realize that we feel very comfortable in the cities. We live in cities, of course. That is a trend all over Europe, all over the world, and it will not change. And I don’t mean that people living in the city are worse than those living in the country and vice versa. But despite all our efforts and everything we have done, we will hardly be able to change that trend.
And then you listen to complaints about not having enough children to leave our country to. But, whatever you say on the subject, you will be criticized, because you have allegedly offended someone because you want to encourage pronatalist policies, because you have denied someone their right. Don't be angry. Today, we have a lot more pets than children, and television shows and newspaper articles about pets are more popular than the ones about children.
I'm sorry I have to tell you this as the President of Serbia, I'm sorry that no one else has the courage to say that, because they know they will be condemned. I have been condemned hundreds of times and I have no problem with that. Pets are wonderful, dogs, cats, parrots, they are all wonderful, and you love each of them, but we humans cannot survive, we have no future if we do not have more children. We have no future, you can say what you want, but our country will not survive.
Therefore, I expect the Government to continue implementing measures to increase birth rates. And I don’t mean to insult anyone. There are people who cannot have children, there are people who have chosen not to have children, but we, as a society and the state, must make sure that there are people who are willing to prolong the life of the state. A state without citizens cannot exist.
And now I will go back to our neighbours and say a few more words about what we have to do.
What we have achieved over the past period is very important to us. We have the best possible relations with our Hungarian friends. Our relations with Hungary have never been closer, and that is something we must preserve and cultivate. We have very good relations with Romania and Bulgaria and with Greece and Turkey in the wider region. Thanks to the Open Balkan initiative, which I will wholeheartedly advocate and fight for, we have probably the best relations in history with North Macedonia and Albania.I would especially like to thank the Serbian Orthodox Church, His Holiness Porfirije, the Serbian Patriarch, who has made extremely wise decisions thus contributing to our friendship and brotherhood with the Macedonian people. History will be the judge of that, Your Holiness, not some daily report.
Thanks to you and thanks to the policy we have pursued, Serbia is the most popular country in North Macedonia today. They are like brothers to us and we do not have any problems in our relations with them. We have done a great job.
Our relations with Albania are getting better and stronger. However, we will have to focus on our relations with Zagreb, with Croatia, and try to change a lot, to finally agree that our views of the past are different, but we should try to find the same pair of glasses, the same pair of binoculars to look at the future, and see what we can do together. Belgrade’s door is always open for good dialogue and conversation with Zagreb.
I expect the same from Sarajevo, but they need to know that we will always protect the interests of public international law, Serbia’s interests, compliance with the Dayton Accords, respect for the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its integrity. They also need to know that we will never allow the Dayton Accords to be changed without the consent of all three nations and that we will stand with Republika Srpska, develop our relations, help Republika Srpska whenever we can, and we are not ashamed of that nor do we harm anyone by doing so, because we will always try to offer a helping hand to everyone.
My father is originally from the other side of the Drina River, and I was born in Belgrade by chance. Serbs living on the other side of the Drina have always said that people in Serbia can never understand how much Republika Srpska loves Serbia. Today, I can assure our visitors from Republika Srpska that the citizens of Serbia love Republika Srpska no less than the citizens of Republika Srpska love Serbia.
It is important for us to build good, friendly and close relations with Bosniaks, despite all our political differences, despite the fact that sometimes some people do not want to accept a helping hand. We have to do that because of a large number of Bosniaks living in our country. The events that took place in Priboj must never happen again.
I will tell you one thing that will help you understand how much these people love their country. Just as we have managed to build networks of highways, railways, hospitals and factories after many decades, we have managed to bring two gold medals from the European Boxing Championship after 37 years, but we were not able to bring one medal.
I am talking about a boxer from Prijepolje, his surname is Mamić or Memić. He is a Bosniak, who fought so hard for Serbia at the championship in Yerevan, I wish you could have seen it. Whenever he won a medal, he would proudly drape himself with the Serbian flag. We should be proud of our Bosniak brothers and all those who fight for this country, and we should build future together with them. But we Serbs cannot do without conspiracy theories, so I will spice things up by saying that he was robbed of a medal by the referees in a revote.
We cannot change the whole world, we can accept it as it is and seek our place in it. But we can and we want to keep changing ourselves, building our country, in every sense, in every field of science, education, health, economy, infrastructure, sports, and culture.
We will also construct buildings, because, according to Ivo Andrić, they do not only change the appearance and significance of the area where they are located, but also have deep biological ties with the people who use them. There is an intimate and invisible link between buildings and human settlements, a complex and vague, yet constant mutual influence. Through the feats accomplished by individuals, nations create buildings which are the reflections of their deepest, often unconscious aspirations and characteristics, and those buildings slowly and continuously influence the character and habits of the nation. We are getting better, the great writer told us, by building ourselves and our country. This applies not only to structures, but to everything we have built so far and everything that we have yet to build.
That is my principal goal and I will dedicate this presidential term, my last one, to achieving it, so that, once my term ends, Serbia is a better country than it was when I became president. There is no sacrifice that I will not make in order to achieve that goal, there is nothing I won’t do, no effort I won’t be willing to take. Because you cannot compromise on ideals and that is the only thing you cannot compromise on. Everything else is subject to compromise and compromise is a beautiful, not an ugly word. At the end of the day, Serbia is my only ideal.
By placing my hand on the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia and Miroslav's Gospel, I take on the greatest burden of responsibility. This is not only a sense of responsibility towards this generation of Serbian citizens, but also towards our great predecessors, and particularly towards the generations to come. The great Njegoš said: Posterity will judge us by our deeds.I am convinced that future generations, free from emotions that direct participants and contemporaries always have, will make an objective assessment of our time from a safe historical distance as a time of stabilization and rise of Serbia.
Dear friends, before I finish, I would like to thank everyone. I want to thank you, MPs in the previous parliamentary session, for having brought great and important changes to Serbia. You are the ones who dared to say - we do not want to hold all the power in our hands, we want an independent judiciary. You were the only ones who dared to say that and do it. You passed the most important laws, saving people’s lives during the Covid crisis. You introduced the most important measures when Serbia needed protection and preservation in the financial sense. You have done so much good for our people and citizens. History will be the judge of that, not some daily report.
I want to thank all the former presidents of the Republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, who have made a huge contribution to the progress of our country, who know what a state is, whose presence here today shows that those who know what a state is, never forget their duties and always adhere to the basic principle - that the state and the interests of the state must be more important than personal interests. So thank you all for being here today, you have my deep respect for everything you have done for our country.
I want to thank you, dear friends from Republika Srpska. Željka, Mile, I have worked with you a lot over the past five years. It seems to me that we have done so many good things for our people. We have undoubtedly made a few mistakes, too. Thank you for putting up with my different views, for being able to understand that we do not have to have the same opinion on every issue, but we have always known what our goal is, which is good for the Serbian people, the Republic of Serbia and Republika Srpska. Thank you for putting up with me.
Your Holiness, thank you for always standing with our people, for always being there to share both good and evil with us.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my family, who have not had an easy time over the past five years. I do not want to whine, because it won't be easier for them over the next five years either, I just want to tell Danilo, Milica and Vukan that I love them very much and that their dad couldn't do anything without them.For all the above reasons, I will pray to God just as wonderful Rebecca West prayed while the Nazi bombs were falling on her homeland: God, let me handle this like a Serb! Long live Serbia!"
After the swearing-in ceremony, the President of the Republic and Supreme Commander of the Serbian Armed Forces Aleksandar Vučić received a report from the Chief of the Serbian Armed Forces General Staff, General Milan Mojsilović and inspected the Guard of Honour consisting of members of the Army, Air Force and Air Defence, River Flotilla units and Guard in front of the Presidency building on Andrićev Venac.
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