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Aleksandar CotricPolitician from Serbia
Date of Birth: 25.09.1966
Country:  Serbia |
Content:
- Early Life and Political Activism
- Political Landscape in Serbia in the 1990s
- Čotrić's Early Parliamentary Career
- SPO Leadership and Opposition to Milošević
- Belgrade Local Government (1997-2000)
- 1997 Parliamentary Election and Kosovo
- Post-Milošević
- Belgrade Local Election and Parliamentary Election of 2000
- Executive Positions and Later Parliamentary Terms
- In the 2004
Early Life and Political Activism
Željko Čotrić is a Serbian politician who has served multiple terms in the National Assembly of Serbia since 1994 as a member of the Serbian Renewal Movement (Srpski pokret obnove, SPO). He was also an executive member of the Belgrade municipal government from 1997 to 2000 and a deputy minister in the Serbian government from 2004 to 2007, responsible for the Serbian diaspora.
Political Landscape in Serbia in the 1990s
From 1990 to 2000, Serbian and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia politics were dominated by the Socialist Party of Serbia led by Slobodan Milošević. During these years, various opposition parties sought to dislodge Milošević from power, often by forming fragile coalitions with one another.
Čotrić's Early Parliamentary Career
Čotrić was a founding member of the Serbian Renewal Movement in 1990. He first sought election to the Serbian parliament in the 1992 parliamentary election, appearing in the thirteenth position on the Democratic Movement of Serbia (Demokratski pokret Srbije, DEPOS) electoral list in the Užice division. DEPOS won six mandates in this division, and Čotrić was not included in his party's delegation to the assembly.
He was placed higher on DEPOS's list in Užice for the 1993 election; the alliance again won six mandates for the division, and Čotrić was this time chosen by the SPO to serve in its delegation. He took his seat when the assembly convened in early 1994.
SPO Leadership and Opposition to Milošević
In September 1994, SPO leader Vuk Drašković appointed Čotrić to head the party. The following year, Čotrić accused Serbian police of smuggling gasoline and military goods into the Republic of Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina in violation of official blockades; in this context, he urged the government to protect civilians near the Zvornik border crossing from illegal harassment by police or, as he put it, "we will do it ourselves."
In 1996, following the signing of the Dayton Agreement and the conclusion of the Bosnian War, Čotrić announced that the SPO would not contest the Bosnian and Herzegovina elections on the grounds that there were "no media, financial, or any other conditions for democratic voting in either the Republika Srpska or the Muslim-Croat federation."
Belgrade Local Government (1997-2000)
The SPO and the Democratic Party (Demokratska stranka, DS) led an alliance of opposition parties known as Zajedno (Together) in the 1996 Serbian local elections, and Čotrić ran as an alliance candidate in Belgrade. The group was eventually recognized as the victor in the Belgrade elections in February 1997 after disputed official results and a prolonged period of street protests.
Čotrić was elected to the city assembly and was subsequently appointed to the Belgrade executive council as the city's secretary for information. He was also appointed to the management board of RTV Studio B. In May 1997, he announced that the city would sue the state-owned Tanjug news agency for "spreading malicious lies about the new city authorities" and for failing to fulfill contractual financial obligations. He was quoted as saying, "In the past three months since the new authorities were installed in Belgrade, Tanjug has not carried a single positive or objective piece of news. The only comments carried were negative and based on fabrications."
The Zajedno alliance fell apart before the end of 1997, and the SPO formed a new coalition government in Belgrade with the Socialist Party and the Serbian Radical Party. Čotrić was chosen by the new government as the president of the management board of RTV Studio B on September 30.
In February 1998, he announced that the station would likely not renew the Voice of America's "America Calls Serbia" program due to what Čotrić described as its biased editorial policy. (Later in the week, the station's chief editor, Dragan Kojadinović, announced that the program would continue to be broadcast, following assurances from Voice of America that changes would be made.)
1997 Parliamentary Election and Kosovo
The SPO contested the 1997 parliamentary election independently, and Čotrić was re-elected after leading the party's list in the Šabac electoral district. In 1998, he said that the SPO supported the presence of international observers in talks between Serbia and Albanian nationalist groups over the status of Kosovo and Metohija; he added that the Albanian side had "[no] arguments for their unrealistic separatist demands" and that the presence of international observers would deprive the Albanian side of "an alibi for their refusal to participate in the talks."
The SPO's alliance with the Socialist Party broke up amid NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. In April 1999, Čotrić publicly objected to the Yugoslav Army's attempts to influence the editorial policy of Studio B. He participated in protests against Milošević's administration after the end of the NATO campaign, and in November 1999, he accused the government of trying to kill SPO leader Vuk Drašković after a suspicious car crash that killed four SPO members and narrowly missed Drašković himself.
As 1999 ended, Čotrić announced that the SPO would be holding demonstrations for early elections in Serbia and Yugoslavia. He joined other opposition leaders in a protest rally in Kraljevo in March of the following year to denounce the government's crackdown on media freedom.
Post-Milošević
Studio B was forcibly taken over by the government on May 17, 2000. Čotrić responded by calling on the people of Belgrade to defend the station through street protests, saying that the takeover had been carried out by "the fascist coalition which has been killing the Serbian people for years, and which killed Studio B this morning." He later announced a unique form of protest whereby Studio B journalists would read evening radio news bulletins to Belgraders gathered on the balconies of the City Hall.
In June 2000, Čotrić accused DS leader Zoran Đinđić of secretly meeting with Milošević, a charge which Đinđić denied. Milošević's administration fell in October 2000, when Slobodan Milošević was defeated in the Yugoslav presidential election by Democratic Party of Serbia (Demokratska stranka Srbije, DSS) leader Vojislav Koštunica. Public protests soon afterward forced Milošević ally Mirko Marjanović to resign as prime minister of Serbia, and the SPO joined an interim administration to oversee government functions in Serbia pending new elections. Čotrić was appointed as the SPO's representative to the Radio and Television of Serbia regulatory council.
Belgrade Local Election and Parliamentary Election of 2000
Čotrić sought re-election to the Belgrade assembly in the 2000 Serbian local elections, which were held concurrently with the Yugoslav presidential election. He was defeated in Palilula's fourth electoral district by Zoran Luković of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), a broad coalition of opposition parties that did not include the SPO.
The subsequent 2000 parliamentary election in Serbia was held under a revised electoral system in which the entire country was considered a single electoral district and members were elected on the basis of proportional representation. DOS won a landslide victory in the election; the SPO ran its own list and did not receive enough votes to cross the electoral threshold. Đinđić became the new prime minister of Serbia following the election, and the SPO often criticized his government. In November 2001, Čotrić accused Đinđić of misleading the public about the results of a recent diplomatic trip to the United States of America.
Executive Positions and Later Parliamentary Terms
Čotrić served as deputy leader of Vuk Drašković's campaign in the unsuccessful September–October 2002 Serbian presidential election. He was later appointed as the chairman of the SPO executive council.
The SPO formed an alliance with New Serbia for the 2003 parliamentary election and re-entered the assembly when the list won twenty-two mandates. Čotrić was placed twenty-eighth on the coalition list and was not initially part of the SPO's assembly delegation. He was, however, appointed to the assembly on February 12, 2004, as a replacement for a delegate who had resigned to take up a post in the Federal Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro. His return to the national assembly was short-lived; he resigned on March 16, 2004, after being appointed to a government position.
Vojislav Koštunica became prime minister of Serbia following the 2003 election and formed a new coalition government that included the SPO. Čotrić was appointed as the state secretary in the ministry for the Serbian diaspora in 2004 and served in this capacity until 2007, working with minister and fellow SPO official Vojislav Vučković. In July 2004, he met with Croatian state secretary for political affairs Hidajet Biščević to discuss the status of ethnic minorities in both countries; he also met with Serb representatives in Croatia on the same issue. In September 2004, he said that Serbs in Hungary were facing a rising level of intimidation and urged the Hungarian government to punish the perpetrators.
