Aleksandar Vučić and his newly invented opponent, Sandro Gozi, have for days been competing over who can more forcefully and convincingly call for a “debate”.
Sandro Gozi is the new “favourite person of the blockaders” and the main absent opponent of Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić. Gozi, the Secretary General of the European Democratic Party, which in the European Parliament is part of the liberal alliance, is once again making headlines. Supposedly, because he did not dare to face Arnaud Gouillon, Director of the Office for Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Government of Serbia, in a debate.
Allegedly, the debate between Gozi and Gouillon was proposed by the French radio station Radio Courtoisie. “It was an excellent opportunity for a genuine democratic exchange of arguments before the European public,” Gouillon stated.
“Instead, Mr Gozi fled from the debate. For a supposedly declared democrat, refusing a fair and democratic debate in Paris is a major embarrassment,” he added.
Vučić claims no one knows Gozi
Gozi, who has had a political career in his native Italy as well as in France within the movement of President Emmanuel Macron, entered the Serbian public spotlight in a rather bizarre way – because Aleksandar Vučić mentioned him out of nowhere.
Appearing on RTS at the beginning of the month, Vučić mysteriously asked the interview host and the news presenter whether they knew who the “expert” Sandro Gozi was, only to conclude that they had no idea and that no one, apart from his “parents”, had ever heard of Gozi.
Gozi, who is considered a critic of Vučić in Brussels – where all parliamentary groups to the left of centre criticise the Serbian government – responded by inviting Vučić to a debate on N1.
The Belgrade-based television channel subsequently cancelled a planned interview with Gozi, explaining that guests do not have the right to invite others to debates and that such invitations are issued only by N1 journalists and producers.
“Liar” and “crook”
Last week, Gozi repeated his call for a debate with Vučić and urged him not to hide “behind his propaganda machinery”.
“When you insult me, you do not appear strong – you appear weak. When a head of state slanders others to conceal his own political responsibilities, it means he is in serious trouble,” Gozi said in a video posted on social media.
Earlier, Vučić had referred to Gozi as a “crook” in front of journalists.
“We cannot expect support from those who lobby for an independent Kosovo, who label Serbia as genocidal – we have no support from any of them. Among them is this Sandro Gozi, just so you know. This crook who does not even know his own nationality – what matters to him is getting hold of certain funds and money, nothing else,” Vučić stated.
He cynically invited Gozi to a debate on N1 and said that if such a debate did not take place, then Gozi and N1 would be “liars” – something he, Vučić, claimed he did not believe.
Gozi responded: “I do not rely on compliant judges to make accusations disappear, nor do I run a country where people have been protesting against corruption for months.”
Vučić avoids any debate
Leading pro-government media outlets, such as Informer, have already labelled Gozi the “favourite of the blockaders”.
Thus, for weeks, a sort of political theatre has been unfolding, occasionally entertaining the Serbian public. Its president, Vučić, has not engaged in a genuine debate with political opponents for a full 14 years, and has appeared before independent journalists only extremely rarely.
In the meantime, he has reached up to four hundred television and other “addresses” per year, in which he argues with absent opponents.
(Vreme, 28.04.2026)
https://vreme.com/vesti/sandro-goci-aleksandar-vucic-debata/