Milorad Mirčić

Mirčić served as president (i.e., speaker) of the city assembly of Novi Sad and was the city's mayor from January 1993 to June 1994.[2]

He received the sixth position on the Radical Party's electoral list in Novi Sad for the 1992 Serbian general election.[3] The party won ten mandates in the division,[4] and Mirčić was subsequently included in its assembly delegation.[5] (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 on the lists by the sponsoring parties.[6] It was common practice for the latter mandates to be awarded out of order. Mirčić's position on the list did not give him the automatic right to a mandate, although he was in fact included in the party's delegation and took his seat when parliament met in early 1993.) The governing Socialist Party of Serbia won the largest number of seats in this election (101 out of 250) but fell short of a majority; the Radicals finished in second place with seventy-three seats. While the Radicals were technically an opposition party in the sitting of the assembly that followed, they initially worked with the Socialists in an informal coalition. By late 1993, however, the two parties had turned against each other and new elections were called.

Mirčić received the fourth position on the Radical Party's list in Novi Sad for the 1993 parliamentary election.[7] The party won seven seats in the division, and Mirčić automatically received a new mandate.[8] The Socialists won the election and formed a coalition with New Democracy, while the Radicals again served in opposition.

In September 1994, Mirčić disrupted the proceedings of the assembly to demand an emergency debate on the arrest of Radical Party leader Vojislav Šešelj.[9] When Mirčić refused to yield the floor, speaker Dragan Tomić suspended the sitting.[10] The following year, the small, breakaway Nikola Pašić accused Mirčić and two other Radical parliamentarians of physically preventing one of its deputies from entering the assembly.[11] In July 1995, Mirčić was quoted as saying at a Radical Party rally, "I want to create a country called Greater Serbia, with one parliament, one president, one army. We will not stop till our enemies are crushed."[12]

In 1996, after the conclusion of the Bosnian War, Mirčić held a press conference in which he accused Serbian president Slobodan Milošević of planning to assassinate Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić "because he is afraid that Karadžić might go to the Hague (war crimes tribunal) and tell many unpleasant things there."[13]

Mirčić received the first position on the Radical Party's electoral list in the smaller, redistributed Novi Sad division for the 1997 Serbian parliamentary election[14] and was re-elected when the list won three mandates.[15] The Socialist Party once again won the election and the Radicals initially continued to serve in opposition.

The Socialist Party formed a new coalition government with the Yugoslav Left (JUL) and the Radical Party on March 24, 1998. Mirčić was appointed as minister for ties with Serbs outside Serbia in the government of Serbian prime minister Mirko Marjanović.[16]

In November 1998, Mirčić gave an interview in which he discussed the position of Serbs in different republics of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He said that the Serb community in Slovenia "[had] been broken up because no attention [was] being devoted to ethnic minorities," while the government of Croatia, with the support of the international community, was promoting a sham "democracy" while surreptitiously pressuring the Serb community in various ways. He added that the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina was similar to that in Croatia, while Serbs in Macedonia were "trying to secure their basic rights and form their association."[17] In April 1999, after the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Mirčić said that members of the Serbian national minority in Albania were being forced to flee to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia due to physical threats and blackmail.[18]

Mirčić met with recently dismissed Republika Srpska president Nikola Poplašen in September 1999, at a time when Poplašen was still attempting to exercise the office of the presidency and was engaged in a bitter feud with Republika Srpska prime minister Milorad Dodik. Mirčić and Poplašen discussed cooperation between Serbia and the Republika Srpska and the issue of dual citizenship; a joint statement issued after the meeting blamed Dodik and his administration for blocking links between the two communities.[19][20] He later remarked that Serbs in the Republika Srpska were in a worse position than any other Serb community in the Balkans, in that the international community was plotting to destroy their entity.[21]

In October 1999, Mirčić opened a meeting of Serbian language journalists from the diaspora in Belgrade. He said that the meeting was intended to discuss ways of improving access to information. In the course of his speech, he stated, "We have withstood and repelled most brutal physical attacks and have shown that we are capable to fight and defend ourselves. Those who attacked us are now resorting to perfidious methods, not much different from the bombardments in force and intensity — a media war."[22]

Mirčić's term in office came to an end on October 24, 2000, with the fall of Slobodan Milošević's administration.

Serbia's electoral system was reformed for the 2000 election, with the entire country becoming a single constituency. Mirčić received the sixth position on the Radical Party's electoral list and was included in its assembly delegation after the party won twenty-three seats.[23] (From 2000 to 2011, Serbian parliamentary mandates were awarded to sponsoring parties or coalitions rather than to individual candidates. As before, it was common practice for mandates to be awarded out of numerical order; Mirčić did not automatically receive a new mandate by virtue of his list position but was nonetheless selected for another term in the assembly.)[24] The Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) won a landslide victory in this election, and the Radicals returned to opposition. Mirčić, who was the leader of the Radical Party's organization in southern Bačka during this time, spoke at an October 2001 party rally in Novi Sad against the DOS government.[25]

Mirčić received the eighth position on the Radical Party's list in the 2003 election.[26] The party won eighty-two seats, emerging as the largest group in the assembly but falling well short of a majority and ultimately remaining in opposition. Mirčić was again included in the party's assembly delegation.[27] In the sitting of the assembly that followed, he chaired Serbia's defense and security committee.[28]

In March 2004, Mirčić accused ethnic Albanian "separatists" in Kosovo-Metohija of conducting coordinated actions against Serbs in the disputed territory and called for the Serbian government to take all necessary actions to protect the Kosovo Serb community.[29] He condemned the burning of mosques in Belgrade and Niš during the same period.[30] In December 2004, he said that Albanian separatists in Kosovo were "waiting for helicopters and state-of-the-art small arms to be delivered to them from Croatia" and accused the groups in question of planning a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Serbs.[31]

Mirčić and Venko Aleksandrov, the chair of Bulgaria's foreign policy, defense, and security committee, signed an accord in Belgrade in November 2004 for greater cooperation between the two countries.[32] Mirčić paid an official visit to Bulgaria the following year in his role as chair of the committee.[33]

Mirčić appeared on the Radical Party's electoral lists for the republic elections of 2007 and 2008, although he did not take a seat on either occasion.[34]

Mirčić was elected to the Assembly of Vojvodina in the 2004 provincial election, winning the constituency seat for Novi Sad's seventh division (during this time, Vojvodina had a mixed system in which half of the assembly's membership was elected in constituencies and the other half by proportional representation). Here as well, the Radicals emerged as the largest party but fell considerably short of a majority and ultimately served in opposition. Mirčić led the Radical Party caucus in the sitting of the assembly that followed.[35]

In early 2008, Mirčić accused the European Union of encouraging Serbian refugees from Croatia living in Vojvodina to return to their former homes, as part of a strategy to turn Serbs into a minority in Vojvodina and, thereafter, to separate the province from Serbia to the greatest extent possible. Mirčić's political rivals accused him of fomenting ethnic tensions with these comments.[36] The Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians subsequently condemned Mirčić's remark that inter-ethnic clashes could occur in Vojvodina communities with Hungarian majorities if Hungary recognized Kosovo's independence.[37]

Mirčić was a Radical Party vice-president at the republic level in this period and continued to speak for the party on a variety of issues. He opposed the prospect of Serbia joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2007, saying, "The United States is creating hotspots in the world and NATO does the dirtiest work in the field. We do not want to be a part of that."[38] He also said, "by joining NATO, [Serbia] would be making a major concession to the advocates of independence for Kosmet [Kosovo-Metohija], because the alliance's strategy is not to interfere in internal conflicts in its member-nations."[39] Ultimately, Serbia did not join the military alliance.

Following the 2008 parliamentary election, serious discussions took place between the Radical Party, the Democratic Party of Serbia, and the Socialist Party of Serbia about forming a new coalition government, and rumours circulated that Mirčić would be appointed as minister of internal affairs.[40] Ultimately, the Socialists formed a different coalition with the For a European Serbia alliance and the Radicals remained in opposition.

Mirčić appeared in the lead position on the Radical Party's electoral list for the Vojvodina assembly's proportional representation seats in the 2008 provincial election, which took place against the backdrop of discussions for a new coalition government at the republic level.[41] The Radicals suffered a surprisingly poor result in this election, which was won outright by the For a European Vojvodina alliance.[42] Mirčić continued to lead the Radical Party group in the assembly and, from the opposition benches, accused the provincial government of pursuing a secessionist agenda.[43] He opposed the Statute of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, describing it as a blueprint for a "state within a state."[44][45]

Following the Serbian government's arrest and deportation of Radovan Karadžić in mid-2008, Mirčić accused United Kingdom Special Forces groups of taking part in the operation to capture Karadžić and described the government of Serbian president Boris Tadić as traitorous.[46]

The Radical Party experienced a serious split in late 2008, with several members joining the breakaway Serbian Progressive Party led by Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić. Mirčić, considered a prominent member of party leader Vojislav Šešelj's hardline faction, remained with the Radicals; when Nikolić set up a parliamentary group composed of ex-Radicals, Mirčić accused him of an illegal "snatching of mandates."[47][48]

The Radicals, seriously weakened by the 2008 split, fell to only four seats in the Vojvodina Assembly in the 2012 provincial election. Mirčić was defeated in a bid for re-election in Novi Sad's seventh constituency seat.

Serbia's electoral system was reformed in 2011, such that parliamentary mandates were awarded in numerical order to candidates on successful lists. Mirčić was not a candidate in the 2012 Serbian parliamentary election but received the fourth position on the Radical Party's list for the 2014 election.[49] The party did not, on this occasion, cross the electoral threshold to win representation in the assembly.

The Radical Party returned to assembly following the 2016 parliamentary election, in which they won twenty-two seats. Mirčić once again appeared in the fourth position on the party's list and was, accordingly, elected to his sixth term in the assembly.[50] The election was won by the Progressive Party and its allies, and Mirčić once again serves as an opposition member. He is a member of the assembly committee on finance, state budget, and control of public spending; a member of the agriculture, forestry, and water management committee; a deputy member of the defense and internal affairs committee, the security services control committee, and the committee on administrative, budgetary, mandate, and immunity issues; a member of Serbia's delegation to the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy; and a member of the parliamentary friendship groups with Belarus and Russia.[51]