It has been almost two weeks since Serbia’s Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Snezana Paunović, declared that, had she been in Slobodan Milošević’s position, she would have “ethnically cleansed Kosovo.”
Despite the outrage expressed both at home and abroad, almost nothing has changed in Serbia.
The minister has not resigned. The Prime Minister has remained silent. President Aleksandar Vučić has simply continued campaigning for the parliamentary elections, whenever they may eventually be called.
Rather than apologising, Paunović attempted to clarify her remarks. She claimed she had merely used an “unfortunate term” and had actually meant “voluntary deportation.”
What exactly “voluntary deportation” is, however, the minister never bothered to explain.
Just days after her shocking statement, another story emerged. While feeding the Serbian public stories about ethnic cleansing as a solution, media revealed that Paunović has continued receiving a salary as acting director of the Peć Pharmacy Institution for four years after the institution itself had been dissolved by a decision of the Serbian Government.
According to media reports, she received more than €146,000 from Serbian taxpayers while formally heading an institution that no longer existed.
There is something painfully familiar about this.
In Serbia, those who build their political careers on proclaiming that they are the ultimate defenders of Kosovo often seem to benefit from that role more than anyone else.
Paunović is not a political outsider. Nor is she someone who accidentally found herself in government, like the Prime Minister of Serbia Đuro Macut.
She is a senior SPS official – Slobodan Milošević’s party that, more than three decades after the wars of the 1990s, has never made a genuine break with its political legacy.
Neither, for that matter, has the Serbian Progressive Party or President Vučić.
That’s exactly why Snežana Paunović is the most honest minister in Vučić’s Serbia
For years, nationalist rhetoric has not been a political liability in Serbia. More often than not, it has been a pathway to political advancement.
There is equally little reason to be surprised that such a statement comes from a government whose commitment to regional reconciliation has repeatedly been called into question.
Most recently, even the Western Balkans leaders’ summit in Tivat, a meeting intended to promote European integration and regional cooperation, was overshadowed by incidents that further fuelled tensions instead of trust.
Paunović’s statement was not a slip of the tongue.
Anyone even remotely familiar with Serbia’s pro-government media landscape knows that this type of rhetoric has become part of the political mainstream. References to enemies, traitors, foreign mercenaries and existential threats dominate public discourse with alarming regularity. Against that backdrop, it is hardly surprising that the government appears to assume this controversy will soon disappear, replaced by yet another manufactured political distraction.
But Paunović’s statement carries another message as well.
It is a message to those European capitals that continue insisting Serbia should move forward in its EU accession process despite mounting evidence of democratic backsliding.
How many more signals must come from Belgrade before it becomes clear where the problem lies?
How many more ministers need to speak the language of the 1990s before it is acknowledged that European values are not absorbed simply by adopting European legislation?
If, after all this, some EU member states still choose to reward this government with further progress in the accession process, they will no longer be able to claim they did not know whom they were rewarding.
