In light of Tomislav Nikolic and his cabinet essentially taking
credit for the success of the #NoKosovoUnesco campaign, it’s important to
highlight a few important points that demonstrate the inaccuracy of this claim. Not least of which is the fact that if it were
true, it would be a remarkable achievement given that no one’s quite sure of
exactly what it is that the president does or is doing in Serbia or outside of
it most of the time. We see so much of
our Prime Minister, you could be forgiven for thinking that Serbia is in fact a
member of the Commonwealth.
Firstly, the best way that this government assisted with the
#NoKosovoUnesco cause was by demonstrating a dedication to doing the bare
minimum for it and then just hoping for the best. Unfortunately with that approach, all we
could really expect was the worst. The
reason that I say this was the best assistance they could have provided is because it
forced those of us both in Serbia and in diaspora to take responsibility ourselves
and show the initiative they had failed to show. It brought together the best of the Serb
community (including non-Serbs who were sympathetic to this cause) into a sort
of giant think tank and taskforce. It
demonstrated that when we combined our numbers with our love for our homeland
and our brothers and sisters living in it, our potential was unlimited. From active protests on the ground in Serbia
(from Kosovo to Novi Sad) to consolidated PR campaigns across Europe, Canada, the US and even down to right here in Australia, the government showed
little interest in lending anything more than moral support when work was
underway, but were eager to take all of the credit when the work was completed.
We’ve heard this government pride themselves on having spent
almost nothing on stopping Kosovo from becoming a UNESCO member, and that’s
true. It’s true because they were never
sent invoices for '28 Jun' members’ around the clock campaigning, they were never
sent invoices for Boris Malagurski’s late nights spent arranging graphic
designs for the cause and for Filip Filipi’s coordination of petition
promotion. They weren’t sent invoices for
supporters around the world securing signatures, they weren’t sent invoices for
journalist write-ups about all of this work from people such as Katarina Martic at 'Kurir' and they weren’t sent invoices for my work in Australia or for the articles
written on my blog ‘The Daily Male’ attempting to communicate our message
further. The irony of it all though; they
did little to earn any credit for this campaign yet they were the only ones
being paid to work on this cause.
This is perhaps a good time to raise this issue given the
controversy surrounding a video posted by Andrej Fajgelj, a Serbian citizen,
criticising the Serbian government. Now
we’re not Andrej Fajgelj but we share his concern. And unlike Fajgelj, our power is in our
numbers as well as in our dedication.
Our voices have become too loud for this government to silence us. There are too many of us for them to break
down our doors and imprison us. Our
successes have been too significant for them to discredit us so instead they
opt to claim responsibility for them. So I’ll leave you with my personal message to the Serbian
government and it’s a sentiment I think is shared by many others. It seems that if this government was as
willing and quick to accept responsibility for many of Serbia’s problems as
they were to take responsibility for its successes, then Serbia would really be
on the path to a better future.
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