Dacic: I Am in Touch with Vucic, Don’t Know Why Others Meddle

Ivica Dacic (Beta/Milan Obradovic)

Socialist Party of Serbia leader Ivica Dacic has asked Serbian Progressive Party officials Zorana Mihajlovic and Dragan Sormaz “why [they] meddle in when nobody is negotiating anything with them.”

Responding to negative reactions to his proposal that the Socialists and Progressives run in the coming election together, during an appearance on Happy TV Dacic said that he is in touch with Progressive party leader Aleksandar Vucic and that he did not say anything bad, while other officials had not been mentioned at all.

“I know that in both the Socialist party and the Progressive party there is only one man shouldering all the burden, carrying the cross, based on which their lists win votes. I would like to ask the others not to push themselves into historical events and show some respect for coalition partners,” Dacic added.

“Why do they have to say anything? Maybe they would like to have some other coalition partners – (Dragan) Djilas, and Marinika Tepic, maybe even Vuk Jeremic, maybe they would be better coalition partners for them than the Socialist party? Zorana Mihajlovic now says that I was in coalition with them, but when I became a part of the government, she was a member of G17,” Dacic said and added that “those who used to belong to the DOS have no right to criticize the Socialist party.”

The Socialist party leader also said that it is unusual that Sormaz and Mihajlovic are attacking him because he proposed that the two parties run together, asking what would have happened had he said that he did not want to run together with the Progressives.

Dacic described the claims by Party of Freedom and Justice vice-president Marinika Tepic that he was taking money from businesspeople to pay for the withdrawal of recognition of Kosovo’s independence as “pure lies,” adding that this was “one of the biggest attacks aimed at discrediting Serbia’s state policy.”

Tepic said on Dec. 24 that Dacic was taking money from businesspeople so that he could pay for the withdrawals of recognitions of Kosovo’s independence and that only from arms dealer Slobodan Tesic he had received EUR1 million.

Dacic dubbed Tepic’s statement as “a grave political own goal to the detriment of Serbia” and that he had considered suing her, but that she presented her claim in the form of a question and that he does not want to “quibble” over that, but that his chief of staff had announced the pressing of charges.