By Xhabir Deralla
Serbia is living through a political thriller. Again. Police chiefs in handcuffs. Prosecutors targeting prosecutors. A banker close to the former president’s regime behind bars. His once-soaring bank stripped of its license. Accusations of hundreds of millions of euros siphoned away. An offer to trade explosive secrets of staggering corruption and the plunder of public money for freedom. People in the streets. Crowds confronting the regime’s propaganda mouthpieces. Officials who once appeared untouchable discover that their colleagues know where the files are. Behind every arrest, another question. Behind every revelation, another locked door. Serbia’s sudden appetite for justice raises a question: Who is exposing the system, and who is trying to survive it?
The temptation is to applaud. The obligation is to look closer.
The new parliament has yet to convene. The government is yet to be formed. Still, the country is running on its own. The loudest sign of institutional activity is the click of handcuffs.
Following the Student List’s election victory, Serbia has entered a dizzying limbo. Aleksandar Vučić’s 14-year regime has lost its mandate, but the institutions it shaped still control the files, the machinery of repression and propaganda, and the power to decide whose door gets knocked on. Accountability may finally be advancing. So may the struggle to control it.
Consider Marko Kričak. On 1 November, the criminal-police chief and senior officer Boško Sekulović were arrested over alleged abuses in a murder investigation—including withholding evidence favourable to another police insider, former Belgrade police chief Veselin Milić, himself previously arrested in the case. Kričak also faces allegations of torturing the restaurant owner. Now the investigators are under investigation. Serbia’s police hierarchy appears to have become remarkably efficient at producing suspects from its own ranks.
And the story spills far beyond police headquarters. As CIVIL MEDIA has reported, €6.5 million approved for a church mosaic raises questions about public money paid into an Alta Bank account, and suspicions, reported by Vreme, that some cash reached Moscow. A Moscow-bound flight carrying Aleksandar Vulin is recalled over “a security lapse,” triggering an investigation. Meanwhile, documents published by Radar describe court-approved BIA surveillance of its own journalists and newsroom.
Money, political privilege and the machinery of surveillance: each revelation opens another door into the captured state. Who followed the money? Who followed the journalists following the money? And how much of this apparatus remains intact, waiting for the headlines to pass?
The political significance is already impossible to ignore. Senior figures within the same apparatus have turned criminal proceedings against one another. It obviously wasn’t a fist of friends as it seemed before. The change in political circumstances has brought existing fractures into sharper view.
Belgrade chief prosecutor Nenad Stefanović insists that the arrests have nothing to do with the election result and says preliminary inquiries began in May. That chronology matters. It also leaves a legitimate question: What explains the timing of the arrests?
The prosecution service offers another uncomfortable spectacle. A supervisory commission has recommended proceedings concerning prosecutors and consideration of removing or suspending Stefanović and his deputy. Stefanović has responded with a disciplinary complaint against commission member Branko Stamenković over his public criticism. Accountability is proving popular—provided someone else is on the receiving end.
The officials administering accountability are themselves contesting who should answer for institutional failure. Every arrest might not be a factional operation. But it would be foolish to treat every official now invoking the law as a newly discovered champion of democracy. And yesterday’s regime gatekeepers certainly do not deserve certificates of democratic conversion merely for discovering how to open a case.
Fun fact: Rivalry can expose a real crime. A legitimate investigation can double as a survival strategy. An official can pursue someone else’s wrongdoing while keeping their own out of sight. Justice and self-preservation can share an office. And a prosecutor’s signature.
That is why handcuffs cannot become Serbia’s measure of democratic progress.
The questions go beyond the arrested individuals. Who gave the orders? Who withheld evidence? Who blocked investigations? Who protected whom, and which protections remain intact?
The public is getting a spectacle while still waiting for answers backed by evidence. Arrests come in waves. Social media becomes a courtroom. Amid the applause, those presenting themselves as the solution escape the scrutiny they deserve. I recognise this because I failed to recognise it after Gruevski’s fall in North Macedonia. I saw the promise of change more clearly than the struggle to inherit power. That was my blind spot. It offers no excuse. But it demands an admission. It is easier to see clearly from the outside than from inside the boiling pot.
Serbia has an opportunity to dismantle impunity. It also faces the risk that competing insiders will sacrifice selected figures, redistribute influence and call the result reform. For now, Serbia has plenty of suspects and a growing number of self-appointed saviours. The test is keeping the latter under scrutiny while they investigate the former. Certificates of democratic conversion can wait.
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