In Serbia, you are involved in corruption even before you are born. A pregnant woman who comes to the maternity ward must bring gifts for doctors, midwives, nurses... Sometimes they are small things and sometimes envelopes. They are convinced that the treatment of the baby depends at least a little on these gifts. Everything continues already in the next step of growing up. Parents who sleep in front of kindergartens and schools in order to enroll their children where they want, often receive a signal that if they are "lubricated" a place for their child will be guaranteed.
Studying, buying exams, diplomas, titles, which has become the favorite sport of the caste in power, is not even worth writing about anymore. From the Mayor of Belgrade to the Minister of Police to the Minister of Finance, hardly any prominent progressive can explain what and where he studied. They did not seek knowledge, they bought titles so that their party affiliation would provide them with positions from which they fill their pockets and destroy the future of Serbia. Let me also talk about Mr. Grcic.
And then when children born with a gift, enrolled with a bribe and educated during the time of the profession start looking for a job, they face a special form of corruption which means that joining the ruling party is actually a prerequisite for first employment, and then advancement. When they also swallow that dumpling and realize that they are being put on a bus in order to act as enthusiastic citizens in the leader's tragicomic play, it happens that they have to go to the hospital with their grandmother or grandfather. There, if you don't have to pay, you have to wait so long that you wonder if death will prevent an examination or an intervention.
And people in Serbia are not blind, they see and know what is happening. When they speak, they are expelled through the media, but also through the legal hot rabbit. If you don't believe it, remember Aleksandar Obradović from Krušik. He proved corruption and instead of being treated as a whistle-blower, he was arrested, persecuted and is not working today. There are numerous such examples in which the regime protects the corrupt system on which it rests. Media and political corruption reigns here. In the golden age, opinion, attitude, information are for sale... In a captive state, those who will not make compromises with the government are punished by marginalization. In such circumstances, a person is faced with a simple choice - to throw off the shackles of corruption and leave forever, which has been done by about a million people in the last ten years, or to become part of the corrupt system on which this regime rests.
I choose something else. I choose to fight. I am encouraged by the fact that 60% of my compatriots say that corruption is one of the biggest problems in Serbia. They know that it is the basis of the insecurity we all feel, the overpriced projects we all pay for, the galloping inflation that is causing less and less meat and more and more dough on our tables. And I know there is a way to change that. We need to change the government, because an effective fight against corruption requires political will that implies zero tolerance for all corrupt actions and education about what we don't have because our budget is being eaten up by the corrupt system. This is where it all starts and continues with the introduction of the Law on the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor for the corruption of officials, which includes ministers, prime ministers, mayors of municipalities, directors of public companies, in a word, all elected and appointed persons. We can see that this method gives results on the example of the prosecutor Laura Koveši in Romania. According to the law proposed by the "United" parliamentary group, this prosecutor would have his own police force, which would be responsible only to him. Also, if it is proven that the perpetrators of corruption are public officials, the penal provisions would be increased by a third or doubled depending on the punishment prescribed by the criminal code for the same acts.
It is clear that this law will never be passed by the current government in Serbia because it would mean their end. What the citizens must know is that this is one of the main reasons why Serbia is not progressing towards the EU, which is the best choice for all our citizens. And that's why when, after the protests and the fulfillment of the demands that should stop the spiral of violence, we come to the election, the citizens should choose between those who, as we could hear from the mouth of the mayor's chief of staff, Aleksandar Šapić, rigging tenders, and those who guarantee that the fight will be indiscriminate against corruption, which will provide us with better healthcare, education and an orderly state where empathy reigns instead of aggression.
