Opposition Official: US President’s Family Gives Vucic the Cold Shoulder 

Zdravko Ponos/BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV

Zdravko Ponos, a member of the Serbian Parliament and the leader of opposition party Serbia Center (SRCE), on Dec. 16 said that the family of US President Donald Trump had evaluated that a hotel project in Belgrade would cause them more political damage than financial benefits, and had therefore decided to drop the development project.  

Commenting on the decision of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, to pull out of the project, involving redevelopment of the Army General Staff (Generalstab) complex in downtown Belgrade, Ponos told BETA, the project was too radioactive due to corruptive practices.   

“Politically, I think that the US president’s family has given (Serbian President Aleksandar) Vucic the cold shoulder, as if he were a leper. The General Staff Project was radioactive for its corrupt practices, and all of us who exposed the corrupt nature of the project have contributed to its radioactivity. Here, I do no mean only the political opposition, but I refer also to a large number of professional associations that did a great job communicating these issues with their colleagues around the world,” Ponos said.

In the US, according to him, Vucic has been for a long time “seen as a politician who should be kept at a distance, because he carries a risk of creating a bad image in the American public.” 

Ponos believes that the decision of Trump’s son-in-law to pull out of the project in Belgrade could have negative impacts on some other matters concerning Serbia, but added that “it would be very nice if the American administration could made a clear distinction between Vucic and Serbia as a country.”