Eurasia Press & News
The other day, Minister Tomislav Momirović was sent on national television to tell citizens how before Easter they can buy the cheapest malted eggs in Europe – ten pieces for 129 dinars.
The regime’s idea that Momirović acts as a market barometer is peculiar. Not because the minister has the charisma and appearance of a hard-boiled cucumber, but because as a hotel heir he convinces people – who barely make ends meet just by watching every dinar – that they are incapable of finding cheap eggs.
Isn’t it impudence of the first kind, to be told about chicken eggs by a big capitalist who probably knows more about Faberge eggs?
And by the way, Momirović insisted on proving that food in Serbia is “if not the cheapest”, and “among the cheapest” in Europe. It’s a shame that he didn’t add that Serbian salaries are “if not the lowest”, and that “among the lowest”, and that this means that the purchasing power and standard are “if not the poorest”, and it is “among the poorest” in Europe.
“We are aware,” continued Momirović in a futile attempt to imitate Vučić’s contrite intonation, “that people perceive it differently, because realistically inflation is currently present, realistically there is an increase in prices, we are not running away from it.”
Housewives, pensioners, the working class and the honest intelligentsia could breathe a sigh of relief here – the minister admitted that price increases exist, and until then they thought that some mystical force was taking money out of their wallets.
Vučić knows very well that, after eleven years of stories about general progress and unstoppable improvement, his main marketing lever is being crowned.
He knows that he didn’t come to power back then just because of stories about “yellow thieves” or because he somewhere promised to solve Kosovo and appointed Dacic as prime minister – but above all because the Democrats and the Dinks were not able to overcome the global economic crisis in 2008 when they were in Serbia. hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs.
That is why to this day Vučić tirelessly talks about salaries and pensions, seven hundred euros, one thousand euros, the most in history, the most in the region. Caricaturing the catchphrase “Tito stole, but he also gave to us”, the progressives established a system in which the proximity of Vučić’s estates guarantees obscene enrichment and rigged tenders, but even for the ordinary world there is a little crumb, a state job, a higher minimum wage, a small charm. Now it all crumbles like an effervescent tablet.
The progress that was achieved in the last two or three years has completely disappeared. Historical impoverishment is underway, with wild prices of everything, where the authorities still have a slim hope of convincing the citizens that it is all some global imported inflation , which is to blame for the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Even a layman can see that it is not, that the price increases are significantly higher than elsewhere in Europe and that they are not easing yet. They go to Bosnia to the supermarket, to Croatia to buy diesel.
Vučić knows all this, that’s why he tirelessly pushes the Chinese blackboard around the television studios, draws, writes and teaches, explains that the people understand, scares people that without him the flood would arrive.
But to whom are Vučić, heir apparent Momirović and other key figures of the regime talking? To people who know all the prices by heart because they are forced to know them? Which no one can agree on how many eggs, milk and pork leg they could buy before, and how much now? Who live under lousy rents or are struggling with how to pay the loan installment?
When the line is drawn – the weekly NIN recently wrote about it – the purchasing power in Serbia is barely a little higher than fifteen years ago. Everything Vučić bases his propaganda on has disappeared, if it ever existed.
In that story, it seems shocking that the opposition and various critics of the regime are the only ones who do not know what Vučić and the people know. They waste their time and energy by talking about other topics, the “betrayal of Kosovo”, the non-existent European path, the rule of law, attacks on some journalists… these topics are not unimportant, but for the common man they are far behind the question of bread. And eggs.
Many opposition leaders pretend to be analysts on the few televisions they have access to, and try to guide the people in this or that, instead of repeating to the point of exhaustion what is most obvious to the people and what worries them the most – that Serbia is barely making ends meet again. .
Maybe those earthly topics are beneath the honor of some. Maybe they are just a part of another caste that no longer knows what torments the common man because it has lost all contact with him. They could learn from Vučić here – it is obvious that he likes expensive wines and jackets, but he still knows what is important to the people and what he should lie about.
