Brnabic: Opposition caused chaos wanting to prevent fulfilling of students' 4th demand

Photo: Tanjug/Milos Milivojevic

President of the National Assembly Ana Brnabic said today that the chaos, which the opposition created in the Assembly on March 4, happened in order to prevent the adoption of a law that reduces tuition fees for students.

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"All that was done in order to prevent the National Assembly from fulfilling the fourth student demand, that is, from adopt amendments to the Law on Higher Education, which lower school fees by 50 percent and increase teachers' salaries by 16 percent," Brnabic told TV Pink.

She said that proof of this is that the opposition did not vote for the amendments to the Law on Higher Education to be included on the agenda under urgent procedure, while the majority of 144 deputies voted in favor of.

"The second thing is that everything started when the ministers came in, and they had to explain the law, because they negotiated it with the expert working group and the universities. We asked for the National Assembly to negotiate, but the universities refused. So, the ministers had to," said Brnabic.

According to her, all this was done in order to prevent fulfilling the fourth demand and so that on March 15 the opposition could say, "your demands have not been met, the students are with us, we are going for a violent change of government" - that is, so that the opposition would abuse the students for something that the students absolutely do not want.

Brnabic also stated that she was struck by the cowardice and insincerity surrounding the presentation of the analysis of a working group that verifies whether the first three student demands have been met.

"What we saw from the very way the report of that expert working group was published tells you everything about that group. I must admit that the expert working group for fulfilling the fourth demand worked much more objectively, better and those people were much more fair and did everything transparently. I don't agree with all the things they asked for, but alright, they sat down and talked," she said.

Brnabic added that the teachers participating in the expert working group that should determine the fulfillment of the first three requirements are politically motivated.

According to her, the public broadcaster, RTS, called for a "color revolution" in what she said was the publication of an "unverified and unread" report of that expert working group.

"I demand an official apology from RTS, to all citizens of Serbia, because RTS has fallen into the trap of publishing half-information, fake news and quite knowingly deceiving the public about one of the most sensitive issues at the moment, regarding the stability of Serbia," said Brnabic.

(Telegraf.rs/Tanjug)