ProGlas Will Not Respond to Invitations from Authorities

Ivanka Popovic (BetaPhoto/Milan Obradovic)

The ProGlas (ProVote) initiative announced on Aug.21 that its members would not respond to invitations for “talks” behind closed doors with any bearer of current authority.

The Nova.rs portal reported on Aug. 20 that the speaker of the Serbian parliament, Ana Brnabic, tried to invite a professor of the Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy in Belgrade and a signatory of ProGlas, Ivanka Popovic, for talks, but that the former rector of the University in Belgrade had refused.

The announcement of ProGlas reads that such invitations were viewed as “a forced tactical maneuver of the authorities, which do not have a response to the massively expressed demand of the people of Serbia for the stopping of the lithium mining project.” “The inappropriate character of this invitation is also proven by the fact that it came at a time when numerous ecological activists and citizens were being flagrantly repressed and intimidated, detained and arrested for the alleged undermining of the constitutional order,” it was stated.

The initiative assessed that this was simultaneous with a “selective tabloid campaign against civil associations which finance their activities from legally permitted sources – foreign donations – the same that are used to secure the unobstructed functioning of the highest state organs and public institutions and services of this country.”