DS leader: This is not new, but reshuffled cabinet

DS leader: This is not new, but reshuffled cabinet

According to Đilas, this coalition government is a result of compromise, while "great powers influenced its formation, so all the power will be in the hands of the next prime minister."

Đilas told reporters in the Serbian parliament that he expects the coalition government will be reshuffled in a year.

"In the new government, the offices have been swapped between leader of the Serb Progressive Party (SNS) and next prime minister Aleksandar Vučić, who has so far been the first deputy prime minister, and leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) Ivica Dačić, and previous energy minister and new transport minister Zorana Mihajlović (SNS) and previous transport minister and new energy minister Aleksandar Antić (SPS), and all this could have been done without the recent snap election," according to him.

"It is evident that great powers influenced the formation of this government and that compromises were made which will not be good for the country," he said.

Đilas said that it is no good that ministers in economic departments have no experience in the real sector of the economy.

"And that is felt in the proposed measures, the dominant measure being to sell out everything that Serbia has," Đilas said, speaking about the expose that the prime minister-designate presented to MPs earlier today, and noted that there are no novelties in the program of the new government, and described it as "more demagogy".

Đilas noted that in the first three months of this year, the Serbian government has a deficit of EUR 700 million, and the finance minister will remain the same nevertheless.

"Up to now, we have had privatizations of companies; now, we will have a privatized state where one man will make decisions in the government, and all decisions will be delivered at one place only," Đilas said.

In the early parliamentary elections that were held on March 16, the SNS, the leading party of the new ruling coalition, swept 158 seats in the 250-member parliament, while the DS secured 17 seats.

"Ambitious"

Nenad Čanak, head of the parliamentary group of the opposition League of Social Democrats of Vojvodina (LSV), has said that the deadlines for achieving the objectives of the new government, presented by Prime Minister-Designate Aleksandar Vučić earlier on Sunday, are ambitious and hard to meet.

Čanak told reporters in the Serbian parliament that he is not satisfied with the fact that the autonomous province of Vojvodina was not mentioned in the expose, noting that there was no answer to the question as to “why the Russians are paying a lower resource rent in Serbia than in Russia" either.

"These are the questions to which we got no answers," Čanak said, wishing every success to the new Serbian government, and noted that Vucic's expose contained all that the LSV has been advocating for "since the foundation", except for the issue relating to Vojvodina's autonomy.