Radojko Petrić

Radojko Petrić (Serbian Cyrillic: Радојко Петрић; born 17 November 1940) is a Serbian former politician. He served in the Serbian and Yugoslavian parliaments and was the mayor of Prijepolje from 1992 to 1993. During his political career, Petrić was a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS).

Private career

Petrić has a Master of Economics degree.[1] For many years, he was director of the Ljubiša Miodragović textile combine.[2]

Politician

Federal representative and mayor

The Socialist Party dominated Serbia's political life in the 1990s under the authoritarian rule of Slobodan Milošević.

Petrić was elected to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's Chamber of Citizens in the May 1992 Yugoslavian parliamentary election, winning a narrow victory in the Prijepolje constituency. The SPS won a majority victory in the election overall, due in part to a boycott by several leading opposition parties. Petrić was also elected to the Prijepolje local assembly in the May 1992 Serbian local elections, which took place concurrently with the Yugoslavian vote, and was chosen afterward as the municipality's mayor.[3] In October 1992, he was elected as a member of the Socialist Party's main board.[4]

Petrić's term as mayor of Prijepolje coincided with early period of the Bosnian War. In August 1992, he denied reports that Bosniak (Muslim) refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina were being held in camps in Prijepolje and mistreated.[5]

Due to ongoing doubts about the legitimacy of the May 1992 vote, new federal and local elections were held in December of the same year. Prior to the vote, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia adopted a system of full proportional representation in which one-third of the Chamber of Citizens mandates would be assigned to candidates on successful lists in numerical order, with the remaining two-thirds assigned to other candidates at the discretion of the sponsoring parties and coalitions. Petrić appeared in the fifth position on the SPS's electoral list for Užice.[6] The list won exactly five seats, and the SPS afterward assigned all of its "optional" mandates for the division in numerical order, giving Petrić a mandate for a second term.[7][8] The Socialists and their Montenegrin allies won the election, and Petrić again served as a government supporter.

Petrić was also re-elected to the Prijepolje assembly in the December 1992 Serbian local elections, in which the Socialists won forty-two of the municipality's fifty-seven seats. He was nominated for a second term as mayor but, due to divisions in the local ranks of the Socialists, did not receive enough support for the position.[9] He continued to lead an interim administration until March 1993 and then stood down from office.

On 27 February 1993, near the end of Petrić's tenure as mayor, members of a Bosnian Serb paramilitary unit under the leadership of Milan Lukić kidnapped eighteen ethnic Bosniaks, one ethnic Croat, and one other person of unknown origin from a Belgrade–Bar train when it briefly crossed from Serbia into Bosnian territory. The victims were later tortured and murdered, an incident known as the Štrpci massacre. At least one of those kidnapped was from Prijepolje, and the incident contributed to a rise in tensions between Serbs and Bosniaks in the municipality.[10] Petrić made some efforts to calm the situation; in the very last days of his mayoralty, he arranged for Serbian president Milošević to meet with local Bosniak community representatives in Prijepolje. Milošević said that he would "turn heaven and earth" to find the kidnap victims, and Petrić later credited him for preserving the peace of the area.[11] (Evidence has subsequently emerged that some high-ranking Serbian and Yugoslavian officials were complicit in the massacre, at least to the extent of having advance knowledge of the kidnapping and doing nothing to prevent it. There is no suggestion that Petrić was personally implicated.)[12][13]

The Socialist Party contested in the 1996 Yugoslavian parliamentary election in an alliance with the Yugoslav Left (JUL) and New Democracy (ND), and Petrić appeared in the second position (out of four) on the alliance's list for the smaller, redistributed Užice division.[14] The list won two seats; on this occasion, he was not assigned a new mandate.[a][15][16]

Serbian parliamentarian

Slobodan Milošević was defeated in the 2000 Yugoslavian presidential election and subsequently fell from power on 5 October 2000. Serbia's republican government also fell after Milošević's defeat, and a new Serbian parliamentary election was called for December 2000. Prior to the vote, Serbia's electoral laws were reformed such that the entire country became an at-large electoral division and all mandates were assigned to candidates on successful lists at the discretion of the sponsoring parties and coalitions, irrespective of numerical order.[17] Petrić appeared in the 171st position on the Socialist Party's list, which was mostly alphabetical, and was assigned a mandate after the list won thirty-seven seats.[18][19] He took his seat when the assembly convened in early 2001. The Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) won a landslide victory in the election, and the Socialists served in opposition. In the assembly, Petrić was a member of the foreign affairs committee and the committee on trade and tourism.[20]

Petrić appeared in the 177th position on the SPS's list in the 2003 Serbian parliamentary election; as before, the list was mostly alphabetical.[21][22] The Socialists won twenty-two seats, and he was not given a new assembly mandate. His term ended when the new assembly convened in early 2004.

Since 2004

The Socialists won four out of sixty-one seats in Prijepolje in the 2004 Serbian local elections.[23] Petrić was one of the Socialist Party's representatives in the local assembly during the term that followed. The party was in opposition during this time.[24]

The Socialists again won four seats in Prijepolje in the 2008 local elections. The municipality did not choose its government by the legal deadline, and a repeat election was held later in the year. By the time of the repeat vote, the SPS was participating in a coalition government with the Democratic Party (DS) at the republic level. The DS and SPS (along with G17 Plus and the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO)) ran a combined list in the repeat vote, and the list won nine seats.[25] Afterward, both the SPS and DS joined a local coalition with the Sandžak Democratic Party (SDP) and the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). Petrić was re-elected to the assembly as a Socialist Party representative and served as a supporter of the administration.[26] In early 2012, he strongly criticized a New Serbia (NS) representative who said that he "did not like cities with mosques" during a local assembly debate; Petrić said that citizens would be "shocked" by the comment.[27]

He did not seek re-election in the 2012 Serbian local elections.

Electoral record

Federal (FR Yugoslavia)

May 1992 Yugoslavian federal election: Prijepolje
CandidatePartyVotes%
Radojko PetrićSocialist Party of Serbia23,39835.33
Đorđe PavlovićSerbian Radical Party20,39330.79
Miloš VidakovićCitizens' Group16,17824.43
Milan LučićLeague of Communists – Movement for Yugoslavia6,2669.46
Total66,235100.00
Source: [28]

Notes

  1. ^ The alliance's lead candidate in Užice, Milisav Čutović of the JUL, was automatically elected, and the alliance's "optional" mandate was given to fourth-ranked candidate Miroslav Stefanović of New Democracy. See Borba, 30 December 1996, p. 17; and Borba, 11 February 1997, p. 1.

References

  1. ^ Borba, 21 May 1992, p. 11.
  2. ^ I. Kriještorac, "Orijentiri napretka ili spisak lepih želja", Danas, 14 October 2010, accessed 14 October 2026.
  3. ^ Borba, 17 March 1993, p. 11.
  4. ^ Borba, 26 October 1992, p. 4.
  5. ^ Borba, 12 August 1992, p. 8.
  6. ^ Borba, 26 November 1992, p. 13.
  7. ^ ИЗБОРИ '92: ВЕЋЕ ГРАЂАНА САВЕЗНЕ СКУПШТИНЕ, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Department of Statistics (1993), pp. 15, 30.
  8. ^ Borba, 16 January 1993, p. 4.
  9. ^ Borba, 17 March 1993, p. 11.
  10. ^ Milica Stojanović, "The Štrpci Train Abductions: Oral History of a Bosnian Atrocity", Balkan Insight, 27 February 2023, accessed 14 March 2026.
  11. ^ Borba, 27 November 1997, p. 2.
  12. ^ Borba, 17 March 1993, p. 3.
  13. ^ Nataša Anđelković, "Otmica u Štrpcima, skrajnuti zločin koji se prećutkuje", British Broadcasting Corporation News in Serbian, 27 February 2023, accessed 14 March 1993.
  14. ^ "KANDIDATI ZA SAVEZNE POSLANIKE", uzice.net, 15 October 1996, accessed 14 March 2026.
  15. ^ ИЗБОРИ '96: ВЕЋЕ ГРАЂАНА САВЕЗНЕ СКУПШТИНЕ, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Department of Statistics (1996), p. 53.
  16. ^ Federal Deputies, Archived 1999-10-07 at the Wayback Machine, Socialist Party of Serbia, 7 October 1999, accessed 11 July 2025.
  17. ^ 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.
  18. ^ Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 23. децембра 2000. године и 10. јануара 2001. године – ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (3 Социјалистичка партија Србије – Слободан Милошевић), Archived 2023-03-29 at the Wayback Machine, Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 April 2024.
  19. ^ PRVA KONSTITUTIVNA SEDNICA, 22.01.2001., Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 25 December 2025.
  20. ^ Детаљи о народном посланику: ПЕТРИЋ, РАДОЈКО, Archived 2003-04-22 at the Wayback Machine, National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, accessed 14 March 2026.
  21. ^ Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 28. децембра 2003. године – ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (9. СОЦИЈАЛИСТИЧКА ПАРТИЈА СРБИЈЕ - СЛОБОДАН МИЛОШЕВИЋ), Archived 2021-04-22 at the Wayback Machine, Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 April 2024.
  22. ^ "Skupština čeka demokrate", Archived 2021-07-13 at the Wayback Machine, Glas javnosti, 13 January 2004, accessed 9 July 2025.
  23. ^ Lokalni Izbori – Republika Srbija; Lokalni Izbori 2004; Bureau of Statistics, Republic of Serbia; p. 90.
  24. ^ Direktorijum lokalnih samouprava u Srbiji, Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID), September 2005, pp. 278-279.
  25. ^ Službeni Glasnik (Opštine Prijepolje), Volume 2 Number 62 (19 November 2008), pp. 1-2.
  26. ^ I. Kriještorac, "Orijentiri napretka ili spisak lepih želja", Danas, 14 October 2010, accessed 14 October 2026.
  27. ^ Indira Hadžagić-Duraković, "'„Koja nas to sila gura prema Turcima?'", Danas, 26 January 2012, accessed 14 March 2026.
  28. ^ ИЗБОРИ '92: КОНАЧНИ РЕЗУЛТАТИ, Republic of Serbia and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Department of Statistics (1992), p. 13.
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