Serbian Radical Party

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Srpska radikalna stranka
Serbian Radical Party
SRS logo
Vojislav Šešelj
Party leader Vojislav Šešelj
Secretary General Nataša Jovanović
Deputy Chairman Nemanja Šarović
founding February 23, 1991
Place of foundation Kragujevac , SFR Yugoslavia
Headquarters Magistratski trg br. 3
11080 Zemun, Beograd
newspaper Velika Srbija
Alignment Serbian nationalism ,
right-wing populism ,
right-wing extremism ,
national
conservatism , anti-communism ,
criticism of globalization ,
EU skepticism ,
Russophilia ,
republicanism ,
irredentism
Parliament seats
22/250
Number of members 500,000 (as of 2011)
Website Srpskaradikalnastranka.org.rs

The Serbian Radical Party ( Serbian Српска радикална странка / Srpska radikalna stranka , abbreviated CPC / SRS ) is an extremely nationalist right-wing party in Serbia .

ideology

Seat of the SRS in the Belgrade district of Zemun .

The SRS represents an extremely nationalist ideology and advocates the creation of a Greater Serbia that should extend to the so-called Virovitica-Karlovac-Karlobag line .

founding

On January 6, 1990, on Christmas Eve of the Serbian Orthodoxy , on the initiative of politically and ideologically like-minded people, including Vojislav Šešelj , a manifesto for the establishment of the Srpski slobodarski pokret (SSP), the “Serbian Freedom Movement ”, was signed in Belgrade , with which the educational process of SRS was initiated. The founding assembly of the SSP was held in Batajnica on January 23, 1990 , and is today considered the first SRS meeting , known as the Prvi otadžbinski kongres , the "First Patriotic Congress". Later, the voluntary association of the SSP with a breakaway faction of the anti-communist Srpska narodna obnova (SNO), which emerged on January 6, 1989 and headed by Mirko Jović, the first Serbian party in socialist Yugoslavia, which emerged on March 10 under Vuk Drašković was decided by declaration (1945–1991) after the fall of communism , which restored the multi-party system .

The merger of the SSP under Šešelj's leadership and Drašković's Srpska narodna obnova on March 14, 1990 finally brought about the Srpski pokret obnove (SPO), the “Serbian Renewal Movement ”. May 31, 1990 Šešelj left the party again and founded on June 18, the Srpski četnički Pokret (SCP), the "Serbian Chetnik Movement", the official registration because of the identification with the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland and of Dragoljub Mihailovic out Monarchist National Serb Chetnik Associations was refused. Finally, on February 23, 1991 in Kragujevac, the SRS was created through the union of the SČP and the Narodna radikalna stranka (NRS) by Tomislav Nikolić .

The Serbian Radical Party was founded in Montenegro in May 1993, and in 1995 it was named Srpska radikalna stranka Dr. Vojislav Šešelja around. Today it is called Stranka srpskih radikala .

Party organs

The most important party organs, i.e. bodies , are the Patriotic Congress ( Otadžbinski kongres ) and the Central Patriotic Administration ( Centralna otadžbinska uprava ). At the Patriotic Congress every four years the president , his deputy, the vice-presidents and the members of the Central Patriotic Administration are elected. The congress decides on the party program and sets the political direction of the party for the coming legislative period, while the administration takes on organizational and planning tasks. Other party organs are the general secretariat chaired by the general secretary , the statutes commission and the supervisory board as well as the board of directors and organs of the local party organizations .

The President of the Central Patriotic Administration is Vojislav Šešelj, his deputy is Nemanja Šarović. Milorad Mirčić and Zoran Krasić act as vice-presidents.

politics

Party platform

The national question is at the center of the party's program. According to the party program, the SRS is fighting through peaceful and democratic means for the creation of a whole and unified Serbian ethnic, state, economic and cultural area. According to the party program, she advocates a society based on national, gender and religious equality and human rights . The SRS openly supports the Greater Serbian ideology, its party newspaper is called Velika Srbija (Greater Serbia / Greater Serbia).

In contrast, there were numerous calls for participation in the armed struggle during the Croatian and Bosnian wars from 1991 to 1995, including the deployment of volunteers and paramilitaries and their logistical and financial support.

In the 1990s, the SRS advocated the unification of all areas inhabited by Serbs in the former Yugoslav republics with Serbia . The MPs of the SRS provoked incidents several times in parliament . Vojislav Šešelj was able to draw attention to himself through frequent prison stays and harassment of the Milošević government.

The party has recently drawn attention to itself by threatening war in the event of Kosovo's independence , the dpa news agency reported on June 28, 2006. "We have already defended Kosovo with armed violence against much stronger opponents", according to Belgrade media then acting interim party leader Tomislav Nikolić said. "We will fight forever that Kosovo stays in Serbia".

At the beginning of September 2006, at a rally of the SRS, the will was again expressed to create a Greater Serbia, which should encompass the entire present-day territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina and around half of the territory of Croatia . This led to sharp reactions from neighboring states as well as worldwide and from all democratic forces and parties in Serbia, including Serbian President Boris Tadić himself.

Formation of (para) military associations

During the Yugoslav wars, the party recruited volunteers for the Yugoslav People's Army and for militias that, according to official reports, fought in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia to protect the local Serb population from attacks by Bosnian-Muslim and Croatian paramilitaries. These units are charged with numerous war crimes , for which some of their members have to answer before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague and the War Crimes Court in Belgrade. In this context, Vojislav Šešelj was also charged with forming a criminal organization to commit crimes against humanity and for violating the laws or customs of war . He surrendered to the court voluntarily and had been in custody in The Hague since 2003. On March 31, 2016, he was acquitted of all 28 charges.

On September 5, 2006, several SRS defendants were sentenced to a maximum sentence of 20 years in Belgrade. The charges were war crimes and crimes against humanity during and after the Battle of Vukovar in 1991 and the Vukovar massacre , during which 200 defenseless and mostly wounded people were abducted from the Vukovar hospital and murdered.

The most famous paramilitary units were the

Political successes

In the elections at the end of 1993, the SRS had 39 seats in the Serbian National Assembly and 34 seats in the Citizens' Chamber of the Federal Parliament.

At the beginning of 1995, seven SRS members of the federal parliament under the leadership of Jovan Glomočanin founded the Serbian Radical Party - Nikola Pašić (SRS-NP), other members of the parliament switched to the new party.

From 1998 to September 2000 the Serbian Radical Party formed a coalition with Slobodan Milošević's Socialist Party and formed a "government of national unity" with it.

The SRS won the most seats in the parliamentary elections in Serbia in December 2003 (82 out of 250 seats, over 27% of the vote) under Tomislav Nikolić, the deputy of Šešelj, who had been arrested a few months earlier and was charged before the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia . . But she remained in the opposition . In the parliamentary elections in January 2007, it was able to increase its share of the vote slightly to 28.7%, but due to a higher proportion of votes taken into account for the seats in parliament, with 81 seats, it received one seat less than in 2003.

In the second largest city of Serbia, Novi Sad , the SRS provided the mayoress Maja Gojković, Vice-President of the SRS, between 2004 and 2006 .

In the parliamentary elections on January 21, 2007 , the SRS received 1,152,625 votes, that is 29% of the votes cast with a turnout of 60.59%.

In the parliamentary elections in 2008 , the electoral alliance around the Democratic Party won surprisingly clearly against the Radical Party. Previously, given the independence of Kosovo, at least a head-to-head race had been assumed.

2008 split

After the parliamentary elections in 2008 there were clashes within the party between “dogmatists” over the party chairman Vojislav Šešelj, who was incarcerated in The Hague, and his deputy and group leader of the party in the Serbian parliament ( Skupština Srbije ) Tomislav Nikolić about the further course of the party. Šešelj instructed his party's parliamentarians to vote against ratification of the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union in September 2008 after Nikolić had spoken out in favor. This led to the resignation of Nikolić from his two offices on September 6, 2008. On September 8, 2008, Nikolić then formed a parliamentary group called Vorwärts Serbia ( Napred, Srbijo ) in Skupština with other previous SRS MPs . The 18 members of the new parliamentary group were expelled from the SRS on September 12th. In view of the expulsion, Nikolić announced the founding of a new party. This was then named on October 10, 2008 in Srpska Napredna Stranka .

Marginalization 2012

In the parliamentary elections on May 6, 2012 , the Serbian Radical Party failed with 4.6% just under the 5% hurdle and thus missed re-entry into the Skupština, while the list around Tomislav Nikolić was just about the strongest force.

Resurgence in 2016

In the parliamentary elections on April 24, 2016, the Serbian Radical Party achieved a share of the vote of 8.6% and thus moved into Skupština with 22 MPs.

Alliances

In October 1995 Vladimir Wolfowitsch Zhirinovsky traveled to Belgrade and signed a cooperation agreement with the SRS. In 1997 Jean-Marie Le Pen , chairman of the Front National , came to Belgrade to show solidarity with the SRS. In the same year the SRS signed a cooperation agreement with Ján Slota , the chairman of the Slovak National Party (SNS) .

Election results

year choice Share of votes Seats space position
1992 SerbiaSerbia Parliamentary election 1992 22.58%
73/250
2. Government participation
1993 SerbiaSerbia Parliamentary election 1993 13.85%
39/250
3. opposition
1997 SerbiaSerbia 1997 general election 28.08%
82/250
2. opposition
2000 SerbiaSerbia General election 2000 8.60%
23/250
3. opposition
2003 SerbiaSerbia General election 2003 28.00%
82/250
1. opposition
2007 SerbiaSerbia General election 2007 28.60%
81/250
1. opposition
2008 SerbiaSerbia General election 2008 29.46%
78/250
2. opposition
2012 SerbiaSerbia General election 2012 4.62%
0/250
7th opposition
2014 SerbiaSerbia General election 2014 2.01%
0/250
11. opposition
2016 SerbiaSerbia General election 2016 8.10%
22/250
3. opposition

literature

  • Arno Weckbecker, Frank Hoffmeister: The development of the political parties in the former Yugoslavia. 1997, ISBN 3-486-56336-X , p. 49ff.

swell

  1. blic.rs
  2. Peter Jordan, Gerhard Mangott , Valeria Heuberger: The elections of the years 1994-1997 in Central and Southeastern Europe . Ed .: Austrian Institute for East and Southeast Europe. 1998, ISBN 978-3-443-28520-3 , pp. 43 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. Arno Weckbecker, Frank Hoffmeister: The development of the political parties in the former Yugoslavia . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1997, ISBN 978-3-486-56336-8 , p. 49 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. Michael Martens: "The Serbs were not allowed to decide where they want to live" In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . May 19, 2012.
  5. Florian Bieber: Serbian nationalism after the democratic change of power in Yugoslavia. ( Memento of the original from May 13, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 377 kB). P. 20 and Heinrich Böll Foundation : Pro-Europeans in Serbia strengthened.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 119 kB). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.policy.hu@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.boell.de  
  6. a b c Srpska radikalna stranka: СТАТУТ СРПСКЕ РАДИКАЛНЕ СТРАНКЕ, p. 1. (Serbian-Cyrillic)
  7. a b Sabrina P. Ramet : The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918-2004 . Indiana University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-253-34656-8 , pp. 358 .
  8. a b Sabrina P. Ramet: The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918-2004 . Indiana University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-253-34656-8 , pp. 359 .
  9. The Vijesti : Šešelj ih okupio: Ujedinili se radicali u Crnoj Gori (Montenegrin-Latin)
  10. a b Srpska radikalna stranka: СТАТУТ СРПСКЕ РАДИКАЛНЕ СТРАНКЕ - IV. ОРГАНИ СТРАНКЕ, p. 3. (Serbian-Cyrillic)
  11. a b Srpska radikalna stranka: Потпредседници (Serbian-Cyrillic) ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.srpskaradikalnastranka.org.rs
  12. Largest party in Serbia threatens war. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. July 28, 2006.
  13. Serbian radicals drop their boss . In: Basler Zeitung. September 7, 2008.
  14. Nikolic oformio poslanički club ( Nikolic forms fraction ). b92.net, September 8, 2008.
  15. Serbian radicals exclude Nikolic . In: NZZ Online, September 12, 2008.

Web links