President Vučić said this in Subotica.
Margaréta Tomó spoke in Balk Magazine this week and reported that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić became very angry after seeing the renovated railway station in Svetka and questioned the mayor of the city and the Prime Minister of the Vojvodina province that
why was VMSZ president Bálint Pásztor not invited to this occasion.
His anger only increased when he noticed that the station only had signs in Serbian and English, but no Hungarians. Holding the present Serbian Minister of Transport responsible, he said the following to those around him:
"The station will not open after the originally planned five or six days, it has to be changed. Minister Goran Vesić must resolve this within 10-12 days. There are only Serbian and English subtitles, Hungarian is missing. As long as I am the president, the station will not open until the Hungarian language signs are also ready."
In the demanding Balk Magazine, which deals with the events and phenomena of the Balkan region, which according to its self-definition is BALkon to the BALkan, where "we can sit together to discuss our common issues" , and in which colleague Attila Ambrus reported under the title Brasó: tenyérnyi Nyugat Keleten that the former Saxon city was the only one from Europe to be included in this year's Traveler's Choice Trending Destinations World 25 list of the world's largest travel website, on which Brasó took the 21st place among the world's most popular travel destinations, Margaréta Tomó also asked to speak the other day. He reported on an unusual incident in Vojvodina, about which the national Serbian news agency Tanjug also published a video news report.
Let's see their on-site coverage first!
There is no Pásztor, and there are no Hungarian subtitles, but there is an angry president, the media company in Belgrade reported last Thursday that the Serbian head of state, who was visiting Subotica, indignantly held Mayor Stevan Bakić, Provincial Prime Minister Maja Gojković and Transport Minister Goran Vesić accountable. Several embarrassing scenes took place when President Vučić visited the railway station in Sabtka on the occasion that its renovation was completed. Here, the president congratulated the contractors, but also voiced his disappointment and shock. Not with a little temper.
So the problem was not with the reborn station building, which was modernized before the planned deadline. His anger had a completely different cause. Not one, but two straight away.
Let's see the first one.
Vučić, who arrived in Subotica on a test train from Belgrade, stepped onto the platform and was surprised that the president of the VMSZ did not appear to receive him. It was immediately clear that the matter was not with Bálint Pásztor. Tanjug's by clicking HERE, recorded the following dialogue between the head of state and the mayor:
"Did you invite Bálint Pásztor?"
"The protocol only told me."
"And why didn't you invite Bálint?" This is a big mistake and a big shame. I never understood the protocol and these things are so stupid that I have no words for them. Next time call the protocol to open the station and everything, not me. This cannot happen, we have built this relationship for years and do not destroy it.
The video coverage also revealed that the president was not satisfied with the removal of the mayor from the ruling party, but also questioned the provincial prime minister, also from the Serbian progressive party, for his omission of Bálint Pásztor. Maja Gojković started an awkward explanation and tried to refer to something like that she didn't even know about the non-invitation. “It doesn’t matter, why didn’t you ask?” Vučić said. And the match was no accident, since for many years both of them were in politics in the same radical party of Šešelj.
On the other hand, there were more serious offenses than the protocol blunder - the Serbian president then stated. He discovered that there were no Hungarian signs at the station. This second deficiency infuriated him even more than the first, and he addressed his entourage with the following words:
"I have one more complaint about the railway station, and I guarantee you that it will not be opened until then, even if we exceed the deadline by five or six days because of this. They need to change something at this train station, Bakić, even if you have nothing to do with it. They should have told me as soon as they noticed this. Goran, this should be done in the next 10-12 days. You can see subtitles in Serbian and English here. This is a beautiful thing. The Serbian, Cyrillic script, the English language, I'm happy about that, but the Hungarian subtitles are missing. It must be written here in Hungarian, whether you like it or not, as long as I am the head of state."
After that, let's see what happened in Margaréta Tómó's reading, who begins his report with the most important:
"Aleksandar Vučić announced that the section of the Belgrade-Budapest high-speed railway up to Subotica, i.e. the state border, will be handed over on November 24, in what he hopes will be a huge ceremony, in the presence of Viktor Orbán and a high-ranking Chinese minister."
We also learn from the lines of the introduction where and when this announcement took place and also that it was seasoned with awkward moments: "Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić boarded the test train running between Belgrade and Subotica with his wife, Tamara, on Thursday. After returning home from the United States, he presumably wanted to experience what it's like to get from Belgrade to Subotica by train in one hour and ten minutes, since the tests have been taking place since Monday. At the same time, he looked at the renovated and newly built railway stations, got off at Szabadka, brought down the mayor of Szabadka for several reasons and assigned the Prime Minister of Vojvodina, looked at the station, made a statement, and then left by car."
Then follows the first of the three-part coverage, the mayor of Subotica received his own sub-chapter, which reads as follows: "Aleksandar Vučić had barely got off the train, who was met by Transport Minister Goran Vesić, Provincial Prime Minister Maja Gojković and Li Ming, China the ambassador in Belgrade also accompanied him, and after walking a few meters he immediately had a question for Stevan Bakić, the mayor of Subotica, who officially received the delegation at the station. And the question was, why didn't you invite Bálint Pásztor, the president of the VMSZ?"
It no longer fit into the referenced video of Tanjug, but our article author reveals that there was a continuation of the story. Vučić was not satisfied with the mayor's first push down, and the second one followed. He asked Bakić, who could only shrug his shoulders, whining and repeatedly put everything on the record, why Pásztor was not invited and stated again that it was a huge mistake and a great shame. He then pointed out, - and here I will once again hand over the floor to the colleague:
"that they shouldn't destroy everything they built (presumably referring to what they did together with the deceased president of the VMSZ, István Pásztor, for the relationship between the two peoples - in order to reach the much-talked-about highest historical level)."
It is part of the truth, writes the author of the article, that the president of the VMSZ was not in the city that day, because he was in Óbecsé and Ada in the company of Levente Magyar, the state secretary of Bem rakpart, where the Prosperitati Alapítvány handed over several large-scale investments with the support of the Hungarian government. However, he clarifies right away:
there is no doubt that Bálint Pásztor would have preferred to receive the Serbian president if he had been invited to the event.
The entire article can be read on the Maszol.ro portal!
Featured image: Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić at the train station in Sabtka. Next to him, on the right, the Prime Minister of the Province, Maja Gojković, on the left, the Minister of Transport, Goran Vesić, and Stevan Bakić, Mayor of Subotica | Photo: Aleksandar Vučić's Facebook page
