Serbian MPs Inquire about Rail Ticket Sale Controversy, Rights of Bosniaks, Liftings Sanctions against Belarus

National Assembly of Serbia (BETAPHOTO/ANA SLOVIC)

In the opening of the Serbian Parliament sitting on Oct. 8, MPs inquired about a variety of topics, to which the Government and state institutions should provide answers in writing. 

Democratic Party MP Dragana Rakic asked why national passenger railway company Srbijavoz had been applying discriminatory policy by disabling people at a number of train stations in rural areas to buy tickets for cash, as only ticket vending machines were available. Because of this, Rakic added, students, unemployed, high school students, farmers, and others not in possession of payment cards had to buy tickets onboard for an additional RSD500 the regular price. 

Milica Marusic Jablanovic from the Ecological Uprising asked when to expect scraping VAT on donated food, stressing that around 20 percent of Serbia’s citizens were at risk of poverty with monthly incomes under RSD26,500, of whom 800,000 lived in poverty, while “we have not been able to change the law on VAT for six years now.”

Ahmedin Skrijelj, from the parliamentary group consisting the Free Citizens Movement, the Party of Democratic Action of Sandzak and the Party for Democratic Action, asked why the Bosniaks could not exercise their right, defined in the Constitution, of representation in state bodies and public companies in Sandzak in line with their national structure, and why classes in the Bosniak language were not provided at the University of Novi Pazar, but only in elementary and high schools. 

Dragan Stanojevic, MP from We – the Voice of the People, asked when Belgrade would lift sanctions imposed on Belarus and when the Belgrade-Minsk air link would be established.

Rastislav Dinic from the Green-Left Front inquired “what needs to happen for Serbia to stop exporting arms to Israel,” recalling that UN experts had advised countries not to supply arms to Israel as that could potentially make them accomplices in war crimes.