Zoran Milošević (Serbian Cyrillic: Зоран Милошевић; born 5 January 1958) is a Serbian politician. He was the mayor of Obilić in the 1990s and served in the Serbian parliament from 1997 to 2001. Milošević has at different times been a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), the Serbian Social Democratic Party (SSDP), and the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).
Private career
editMilošević is a stomatologist.[1]
Politician
editKosovo Serb community leader
editMilošević emerged as a prominent figure in the Kosovo Serb community in 1988 while serving as president of the local community council in Obilić, then located in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo. On a number of occasions, he charged that local Serbs and Montenegrins were facing threats of emigration due to intimidation from some members of the Albanian community; he also accused the managers of the Kosovo Electric Power Company of pursuing a secessionist agenda.[2][3] These statements occurred against a general backdrop of increased tensions between Serbs and Albanians in the province, which was exploited by Slobodan Milošević (no relation) to facilitate his own political ascendancy.
In July 1988, Milošević became the leader of a local Obilić working group that examined the complaints of Serbs and Montenegrins in the community.[4] In September of the same year, he addressed a solidarity rally for Kosovo Serbs at Bojnik in Central Serbia, saying "We will not move from Kosovo. We will not abandon our centuries-old homes even though our personal and national integrity, property and human dignity are threatened. We have decided to fight our enemy to the end."[5]
Relations between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo continued to worsen after this time, and in 1990 most Albanians in the province began a boycott of Serbian state institutions. Milošević joined the Socialist Party of Serbia on its founding in the same year; the Socialists dominated Serbian politics for the next decade under Slobodan Milošević's authoritarian leadership.
Mayor of Obilić
editDue in part to the Albanian boycott, the December 1992 Serbian local elections did not produce a viable assembly in the Obilić municipality, and in early 1993 the Serbian government appointed a municipal council led by Milošević.[6] The local Socialist organization in Obilić was divided in this period, and there were some attempts to remove him from office; at one point, his rivals temporarily succeeded in removing him from the party.[7] This notwithstanding, he ultimately served for the full term. In July 1995, he inaugurated a statue of Serbian hero Miloš Obilić in the municipality's main square.[8]
The Socialist Party won a landslide majority in Obilić in the 1996 Serbian local elections, which took place in spite of the continued Albanian boycott; the party won thirty-four out of thirty-seven seats.[9] Milošević served afterward as president of the assembly, a position that was then equivalent to mayor. He greeted Serbian president Slobodan Milošević at an event in nearby Priština in June 1997, presenting him with the "Milos Obilić" Golden Plaque and "Milos Obilić" Charter.[10]
Serbia lost effective control over Obilić after the end of the Kosovo War in 1999, and Milošević's term as mayor ended at this time.
Parliamentarian
editMilošević was given the sixth position (out of eleven) on a Socialist-led coalition electoral list for the Priština division in the 1997 Serbian parliamentary election.[11] The list won seven seats in the division, and he was assigned a mandate.[12][13] (From 1992 to 2000, Serbia's electoral law stipulated that one-third of parliamentary mandates would be assigned to candidates from successful lists in numerical order, while the remaining two-thirds would be distributed amongst other candidates at the discretion of the sponsoring parties.[14] Milošević was not automatically elected by virtue of his list position, but he received a seat in the assembly all the same.) The Socialist alliance won a plurality victory in the election, and the Socialist Party later formed a coalition government with the Yugoslav Left (JUL) and the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS). Milošević served as a government supporter.
Slobodan Milošević was defeated in the 2000 Yugoslavian presidential election and subsequently fell from power on 5 October 2000. This was a watershed moment in Serbian politics; the Serbian government fell shortly thereafter, and a new Serbian parliamentary election was called for December 2000. Prior to the vote, Serbia's electoral system was reformed such that the entire country became a single at-large electoral division and all parliamentary mandates were assigned to candidates on successful lists at the discretion of the sponsoring parties or coalitions, irrespective of numerical order.[15]
The Socialist Party experienced a number of splits after Milošević's fall from power, and in November 2000 former Yugoslavian president Zoran Lilić established a breakaway organization called the Serbian Social Democratic Party. Milošević joined Lilić's party and appeared in the eighty-second position on its electoral list for the December 2000 election.[16] The party did not cross the electoral threshold for assembly representation, Milošević's term ended when the new assembly convened in January 2001. By this time, he had relocated to Aranđelovac in Central Serbia.
Local politician in Aranđelovac
editMilošević later joined the Serbian Progressive Party, and he was given the tenth position on the party's list in the 2010 off-year local election in Aranđelovac.[17] The list won twelve seats, and he was given a mandate in the local assembly.[18][19] The Progressives originally served in opposition for the term that followed, but they formed government following a local political realignment in 2012.[20] Milošević did not seek re-election in 2014.
References
edit- ↑ Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997. године – ЗБИРНЕ ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (28 Приштина), Archived 2021-04-22 at the Wayback Machine, Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024.
- ↑ Borba, 31 March 1988, p. 4.
- ↑ Borba, 23 April 1988, p. 5.
- ↑ Borba, 27 July 1988, p. 3.
- ↑ Borba, 26 September 1988, p. 4.
- ↑ Sluźbeni Glasnik (Republika Srbije), Volume 49 Number 36 (21 May 1993), p. 1661.
- ↑ Borba, 22 February 1995, p. 10.
- ↑ Borba, 29 June 1995, p. 1.
- ↑ Izbori Za Odbornike Skupština Opština i Gradova u Republici Srbiji, 1996, Bureau of Statistics – Republic of Serbia, p. 89.
- ↑ Borba, 26 June 1997, p. 3.
- ↑ Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997. године – ЗБИРНЕ ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (28 Приштина), Archived 2021-04-22 at the Wayback Machine, Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024.
- ↑ Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997. године – РЕЗУЛТАТИ ИЗБОРА (Извештај о укупним резултатима избора за народне посланике у Народну скупштину Републике Србије, одржаних 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997. године (Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997.) године, Archived 2021-04-22 at the Wayback Machine, Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024.
- ↑ PRVA SEDNICA, 03.12.1997., Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 24 January 2026.
- ↑ Guide to the Early Election Archived 2017-08-03 at the Wayback Machine, Ministry of Information of the Republic of Serbia, December 1992, made available by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, accessed 14 July 2017.
- ↑ Serbia's Law on the Election of Representatives (2000) stipulated that parliamentary mandates would be awarded to electoral lists (Article 80) that crossed the electoral threshold (Article 81), that mandates would be given to candidates appearing on the relevant lists (Article 83), and that the submitters of the lists were responsible for selecting their parliamentary delegations within ten days of the final results being published (Article 84). See Law on the Election of Representatives, Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, No. 35/2000, made available via LegislationOnline, Archived 2021-06-03 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 6 June 2021.
- ↑ Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 23. децембра 2000. године и 10. јануара 2001. године – ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (8 Српска социјал-демократска партија – Зоран Лилић), Archived 2023-03-29 at the Wayback Machine, Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 April 2024.
- ↑ Službeni Glasnik (Opštine Aranđelovac), Volume 3 Number 19 (16 April 2010), p. 6.
- ↑ Službeni Glasnik (Opštine Aranđelovac), Volume 3 Number 20 (7 May 2010), p. 2.
- ↑ Одборници, Archived 2013-05-22 at the Wayback Machine, Municipal Assembly of Aranđelovac, 22 May 2013, accessed 28 March 2026.
- ↑ "Aranđelovac bira novu vlast", B92, 29 August 2012, accessed 13 March 2022.