LDP: Continuity over Kosovo "not good"

BELGRADE -- LDP leader Čedomir Jovanović says the government can focus on EU integration and protect the interests of Kosovo Serbs.

LDP: Continuity over Kosovo "not good"

BELGRADE -- LDP leader Čedomir Jovanović says the government can focus on EU integration and protect the interests of Kosovo Serbs.

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“The LDP will not back down from this because we believe that it endangers European integrations,” he told the daily Politika in an interview.

“On the other hand, the LDP, as a pro-European party, will never be satisfied with the pace of integrations because we are already lagging far behind, but it will do everything to protect the process and speed it up,” Jovanović continued.

His party sees its role in Belgrade in affirming the values which will spark an essential change – a transfer of rights, and not only obligations, from the city to the citizens, from parties to all types of institutions, the state to the community, which must have the advantage, Jovanović said.

“We did not ask for an appanage for ourselves or a quota. We also were not ready to sacrifice out voters by agreeing on a general promise that the DS-SPS coalition will by itself refrain from a introducing a complete partisanship of the city administration,’ he said.

“We were able to build our pre-election idea – abandoning the model of a party state through an essential depolitization of life in Belgrade – into the agreement with the DS. That principle will be carried out on all levels of the city administration, but not by the LDP, instead of the marginal G17 Plus, proclaiming itself as an expert party, but by leading the city through city institutions, not a partisan city council,” Jovanović said.

He added that "professionalism and independence secures people's CVs, as does professional integrity and the fact that their lives and results exist outside of politics and parties".

Jovanović said that changes will not be possible in the country without “an in-depth democratization of the media.”

“The first step is, of course, to replace all those who, like in the Milošević era, believe that every begins and ends with the ruling coalition. This is why we will propose to parliament to change the Broadcasting Law and the Public Service Law, as well as the model for enabling the government to name exclusively its own people as state officials in the media with mixed property, which as a rule happens in Politika and Novosti,” he said.

Jovanović also denied that he cut his vacation short to meet with DS leader Boris Tadić and finally make a deal on the local authorities in Belgrade.