Once again, President Aleksandar Vučić tries to disguise a scandal as “national interest.” In his latest statement defending the controversial lex specialis on the General Staff building, Vučić claimed that “nothing is being sold,” insisting that the land would merely be “leased for 99 years” — a euphemism for permanent handover of public property.
The president’s justification — that the site will host a “museum of bombing victims” — sounds more like a political shield than a sincere tribute. The reality is that the same land, scarred by NATO airstrikes in 1999, will be commercialized under a so-called “public-private partnership” — effectively turning a symbol of tragedy into a luxury project marketed as “Trump Tower.”
According to Vučić, Serbia will receive “28.5 percent of the income” from the deal. Yet, he fails to explain how the Serbian people benefit when a historic, state-owned site is placed under foreign commercial control for nearly a century. Leasing for 99 years is not preservation — it’s privatization under another name.
Comparisons to the “Marshalat” site in Dedinje, where the U.S. Embassy was built, only highlight the irony: Vučić, while preaching sovereignty, continues to hand over national landmarks to private and foreign interests through murky legislative shortcuts.
The so-called “lex specialis” bypasses regular procedures, avoids public debate, and opens the door for corruption under the pretext of urban “revitalization.” Turning a war memorial into a profit-making enterprise is not development — it’s desecration.
What should have been a place of memory and respect risks becoming yet another monument to Vučić’s politics of spectacle — where history, patriotism, and even tragedy are for rent.
