Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has announced the launch of a new online platform called “Who the Hell Are You?” (“Ko si, bre, ti?”), designed to allow citizens to report arrogant and abusive public officials. However, an idea being presented as a novelty closely resembles citizen-government communication models that have existed in some countries for more than a decade.
The most notable example is the “We the People” platform, launched by the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2011. Through that portal, citizens could submit petitions and directly draw the government’s attention to issues they considered important, while institutions were required to respond to initiatives that gathered a sufficient number of signatures.
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Vučić said that the “Who the Hell Are You?” portal will serve as a place where citizens can file complaints about the arrogance and misconduct of certain officials, emphasizing that the attitude of “Do you know who I am?” is one of the things people dislike the most.
However, the fact that similar models of communication between citizens and government authorities have been used for years has led part of the public to view the initiative as a delayed attempt to introduce a mechanism that has long been standard practice in developed democracies. While the Obama administration was using such tools more than a decade ago, Serbia is only now getting its own version of a platform for direct citizen complaints.
Whether the portal will genuinely contribute to greater accountability among public officials or simply become another place for collecting grievances without tangible consequences remains to be seen once it is officially launched.
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Source: Serbian Times Foto: Canva
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