Serbia “bought” the vote against the Resolution on Srebrenica for half a million dollars?
From the moment when the authorities in Serbia found out that a draft Resolution on the Srebrenica genocide was being prepared in the General Assembly of the United Nations, we heard from President Vučić that Serbia would immediately start a fierce diplomatic war.
For the next two months, the Resolution’s vote was a major topic in the media, and with the announcement of the vote and the postponement of the sessions where the vote was to be held, “war” became the buzzword used by the authorities when talking about the upcoming vote.
After a series of diplomatic actions and talks with officials and delegations of the countries of the world, and before the vote, Vučić emphasized that the Resolution will certainly be approved, but that the sponsors of the Resolution and those who support it will have “headaches” from the war that Serbia will prepare for them.
In the end, 84 countries voted in favor of the resolution, 19 against, while 68 abstained. The authorities in Serbia presented this as a great moral victory, despite the fact that the Resolution was passed.
As for the way of Serbia’s “war” against the adoption of the resolution, or at least for reducing the number of countries that will vote for it, in public we can only see that the diplomatic team was constantly talking with the representatives of other countries. to convince them not to vote for the Resolution.
On the other hand, there was also talk of efforts behind closed doors, which the president expressly said he cannot talk about.
Thus, in a guest appearance on TV Prva, a day after the vote, Vucic said that he is especially grateful to the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, and that he will never forget “him”, but that he cannot and we don’t have to talk about everything.
How much does a vote cost?
On Saturday, the chairman of the “Heart of Serbia” party, Zdravko Ponosh, shared on the social network X a post of the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Honduras, in which he thanks Serbia for the donation of 500 thousand dollars for the reconstruction of the Hospital Roatan, which suffered damage in the recent fire.
“On behalf of the Government of the President and the people of Honduras, we thank the Government, the people of Serbia and the Embassy of Serbia in Mexico for announcing the decision to grant humanitarian aid to the Government of Honduras in the amount of 500,000. US dollars to support the Ministry of Health of Honduras to deal with the emergency caused by the fire that destroyed the Roatan hospital”, wrote Enrique Reina on the X social network.
Ponosh commented on the post on Twitter, bringing the donation of the Government of Serbia in connection with the abstention vote of Honduras in the session of the General Assembly of the UN.
“The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Honduras thanks the Government of Serbia for 500 thousand dollars for the reconstruction of the Roatan hospital?! Is $500,000 still too much to pay for the restrained voice of Honduras? When did the Government decide on this and similar “donations”, such as the last one for Ukraine? Why is it a secret for the citizens of Serbia”, asked Ponosh.
“The war will be confidential”
Nemanja Nenadiq, program director of the non-governmental organization Transparency Serbia, believes that not much is known about these half a million dollars, but that it can be assumed that our country has really paid that amount, because the Honduran official’s announcement seems authentic.
“When it comes to the way humanitarian aid is paid in other countries, as far as I know, it is most often done on the basis of the Government’s decisions on the use of funds from the budget reserves”, claims Nenadiq and adds that. The government usually boasts that it has paid humanitarian aid, but it appears that this was not the case.
“Whether the money was actually paid from the budget reserves and when, is not information that the government regularly publishes,” explains Dana’s interviewee.
He emphasizes that this type of decision is never published on the Government’s website, but only in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, and that in that part that is available only to subscribers, which, according to him, is completely inappropriate.
Looking at the Official Gazette, it is noticed that there was no such decision in the last month.
However, Nenadiq explains that the publication in the Official Gazette can be skipped if it is a confidential document.
“In addition, as the Fiscal Council pointed out with the example of allocations from the budget reserve in 2022, in many cases the decisions on the use of budget reserves have not been published even in the Official Gazette because they are marked as strictly confidential, and the basis for marking a confidentiality that was not clear”, concludes our interlocutor.
In addition to the non-transparency of the decision on this donation, if the donation is really related to the Honduran vote in the UN General Assembly, the question of the diplomatic basis for such a move also arises.
The former ambassador, the director of the Beta news agency and the president of the European Movement in Serbia, Radomir Diklić, claims that if the donation is really related to the voice of Honduras, it is not common in good diplomatic practice, although it is good that a country can help another country, especially in health care.
I think that this is a completely inappropriate move because it simply contradicts the essence of diplomacy”, asserts Dikliq and adds that it is worth it if “you can convince someone with arguments”.
“What does it mean? If we were a hypothetical oil-rich country, then we would go left and right and pay for everything alive,” he believes.
Dikliq reiterates that it is a “really inappropriate move” that, if true, indicates that there may have been more such moves.
Asked if that decision could have additional diplomatic consequences, Dikliqi replied that it could not have particularly large consequences, but that it further lowered Serbia’s reputation in the world.
