Following a well-known scenario and under the guise of concern for his friends and one-time and current associates, Dragan Đilas has actually made a point of putting them under his absolute personal control financially and politically
One of the most interesting political phenomena in the year behind us is certainly the rise of the first business party in Serbia's history, led – or rather, owned – by Dragan Đilas. In order to make his ownership official and put his party followers under absolute control, the Freedom and Justice Party leader has hired nearly the entire party leadership at his company, Multikom, removing in this way the boundaries between a parent company and a political party, as well as between Đilas's business and the politics that he purportedly stands for.
Personal interests as the sole policy
When Dragan Đilas put the entire leadership of the party that he is at the helm of on his private company's payroll for the purposes of his political business, he showed yet again that he sees politics solely in terms of business – as he did the public offices that he used to hold.
In this way, Multikom Group, in which the Freedom and Justice Party leader is on paper no more than a co-owner, but in actuality its sole owner, has been turned into a safe haven for the party officials who had not been provided for. The Freedom and Justice Party vice-president Marinika Tepić and prominent party member Dušan Nikezić have found livelihoods for themselves at Đilas's company, as have Aleksandar Bijelić – one of Đilas's closest associates from the days of his pernicious running of Belgrade – and former director of the SIA and Multikom owner's bosom friend, Saša Vukadinović.
Following a well-known scenario and under the guise of concern for his friends and one-time and current associates, Dragan Đilas has actually made a point of putting them under his absolute personal control financially and politically. The reason being that it is hard to conceive that Tepić or Nikezić would ever dare vote against the proposals of the party leader, given that they receive their paychecks from his private company.
Although what Đilas did is not against the law in this case, in political terms he has acted unethically and in a problematic fashion. The reason being that political parties are associations of citizens organizing themselves for the purposes of advocating certain ideas and fighting for specific political goals. One of the gains of modern democracy is the possibility of having open discussions and democratic decision-making procedures within political parties. In the case at hand, these principles have been seriously undermined, and the brazen clientelism passes itself off as a legitimate model of operation of a business party, which is inconceivable in developed political cultures.
Part of the mechanism for protecting Šolak's interests
As Kurir's investigation spanning several months has revealed, Đilas's company Multikom, the political party that he controls and, in all likelihood, owns as well, are component parts of a broader mechanism whose main aim is to protect the interests of the owner of United Group, Dragan Šolak.
Although Đilas and Šolak regularly publicly deny their business ties, there are many practical clues and hints suggesting that they are part of one and the same business conglomerate, as indicated by actions regularly jointly taken in their common media-related and political affairs. For example, Đilas is regularly lavished with unquestioning support of the media controlled by United Group, and the interests of this company are invariably the only policy of Đilas and his followers.
The centralized decision-making in all parts of Šolak's mechanism, including the Multikom Party of Freedom and Justice, is particularly evident in nearly everyday attacks launched by Marinika Tepić and Dušan Nikezić against any competitors or those who for any reason rub the owner of United Group the wrong way.
For example, all the resources of Đilas's political organization were used at full capacity to mount attacks against the state-owned Telekom Serbia, state institutions, regulators, and even private companies and media which are Šolak's company's market competitors. This sort of face-off with business competitors is the worst possible anti-competitive practice and abuse of political parties and media for illegal purposes. Under the logic of democratic societies, the officials of Đilas's party should be standing up for Telekom's interests and not for the destruction of a company which is owned by all the citizens of Serbia and as such a public interest in its own right.
Kurir Editorial Staff