Thread by @JamesLy16155383

1/ 🧵Every Circus has a clown. Today’s session of #Serbia’s 🇷🇸 Parliament opened the next act of President Aleksandar #Vučić’s #Kosovo 🇽🇰 Kabuki Theater. It gave new meaning to the saying: “not my monkeys, not my circus,” and included a convicted rapist and an alleged murder.

2/ The session featured Vučić leading a debate about the Franco-German plan for Kosovo. In a combative speech in which he hurled kafana insults, he offered the parliament no details of the still undisclosed plan and failed to divulge information about it.

3/ The ultra-nationalist opposition played their role in a seemingly scripted fashion. Boško Obradović's ultra-nationalist Dveri deputies unfurled a banner reading "No To Capitulation".

4/ Vučić's supporters in the balcony included Simo Spasić, a notorious SNS-supported thug with a long criminal dossier, who is also a convicted rapist. He was forced to leave after too much heckling.

5/ Also in the balcony was controversial Kosovo Serb businessman Milan Radoičić, who is wanted for the murder of Kosovo Serb opposition politician Oliver Ivanović and suspected of controlling organized crime in the north of Kosovo.

6/ At one point, in what appeared to be a carefully orchestrated part of the Kabuki theater, the right-wing opposition rushed Vučić, and SNS deputies rushed in to defend their president. Curiously, no punches were thrown, which is rather un-Balkan.

https://twitter.com/JamesLy16155383/status/1621156196379168773

7/ During the brawl, Vučić seemed amused at how well members of Serbia's National Kabuki Theater Troupe were performing their roles. He did not appear afraid of violence and his bodyguards did not attempt to evacuate him, as they would have in the event of real violence.

8/ The insults and chaos led to many hilarious comments in social media. One newspaper referred to it as "Our Big Fat Parliamentary Embarrassment".
nova.rs/vesti/politika…

9/ The hilarity will continue tomorrow, when the Parliament reconvenes. For now, Vučić will try to please Washington and Berlin and France by finding a way to push through the Franco-German plan.

10/ Vučić will continue with the well-choreographed Kabuki theater. As I noted in earlier posts, Vučić clearly wants to shift the blame for accepting the Franco-German plan to the Parliament.

11/ Given that Vučić (SNS) controls the Parliament, at some stage he may no longer be able to avoid personal responsibility for accepting the Franco-German plan. Watch for him to hold a nationwide referendum on it if all else fails.

12/ In the meantime, Vučić will hope that Kosovo (Kurti) will not accept the Association of Serbian Municipalities. This will let Vučić off the hook and permit him to refuse the Franco-German plan with the excuse that Kosovo hasn't fulfilled its part of the agreement.

13/ And as long as the Kosovo Kabuki continues, no one in Washington or Brussels will ask unpleasant questions about why Serbia has fallen to 68th place on the Economist's Democracy Index.
n1info.rs/vesti/srbija-p…

Brussels and Washington will interpret Vucic's behavior as standing up to the nationalists, and it will reinforce their belief that only he can deliver on Kosovo, without realizing that they are being had.