Aleksandar Jugović

Aleksandar Jugović (Serbian Cyrillic: Александар Југовић; born 2 November 1975) is an academic, author, and politician in Serbia. He has served in the National Assembly of Serbia since 2008 as a member of the Serbian Renewal Movement (Srpski pokret obnove, SPO).

Early life and private career

Jugović was born in Čačak, in what was then the Socialist Republic of Serbia in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.^[1] He is a graduate of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology and is a professor of Serbian language and literature. Jugović has published the poetry collections Krv i nije voda (1995), Na kraju krajeva (1999), and Jesenim proleća (2002), the play Luna-park, and the novels DISharmonija (2005), Tri roga meseca (2006), Srpski u sto lekcija (2008), Montana (2010), Laureat (2014), Opsenar (2016), and Mora (2018).^[2][3]

Politician

From 2004 to 2012

Jugović received the 105th position on a combined electoral list of the SPO and New Serbia in the 2003 Serbian parliamentary election.^[4] The SPO–New Serbia alliance won twenty-two seats, and he was not chosen for his party's delegation. (From 2000 to 2011, mandates in Serbian elections were distributed at the discretion of successful parties and coalitions, and it was common practice for the mandates to be awarded out of numerical order. Jugović could have been given a mandate despite his relatively low list position, but he was not.)^[5] From 2004 to 2007, Jugović served as assistant Serbian minister of culture,^[6] working with SPO minister Dragan Kojadinović.

The SPO contested the 2007 Serbian parliamentary election on its own, and Jugović received the eighty-sixth position on its list (which was largely arranged in alphabetical order).^[7] The party did not receive enough votes to cross the electoral threshold to win representation in the assembly.

For the 2008 election, the SPO joined the Democratic Party's For a European Serbia alliance, and Jugović received the eighty-sixth position on its list.^[8] The alliance won 102 out of 250 parliamentary mandates and was subsequently able to form a coalition government. Jugović was included in the SPO's parliamentary delegation.^[9]

In October 2008, Jugović described the SPO as "the pillar that rallies the intellectual and pro-European [Union], responsible right wing" in Serbian politics, placing it in the ideological tradition of figures such as Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle.^[10] Three years later, he argued that Serbia should not celebrate July 7 as Uprising Day; his contention was that the Yugoslav partisan uprising on that date in World War II was motivated by communist ideology rather than opposition to the Axis occupation of Serbia.^[11]

In September 2009, Jugović proposed a decentralization strategy for Serbia that, among other things, would have divided Vojvodina into three regions.^[12] He supported the Ahtisaari plan in relation to the status of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia.^[13]

Since 2012

Serbia's electoral system was reformed in 2011, such that parliamentary mandates were assigned in numerical order to candidates on successful lists. The SPO contested the 2012 parliamentary election as part of the Preokret coalition, alternately known in English as Turnover or U-Turn. Jugović received the fifth position on its list, and was re-elected when the alliance won nineteen seats.^[14] The Serbian Progressive Party and its allies emerged from the election with the most seats, narrowly defeating the Democratic Party's Choice for a Better Life list. Initially, Jugović urged the formation of a new coalition government led by Boris Tadić and the Democratic Party.^[15] Subsequently, however, he supported an alliance between the SPO and the Progressives.

The SPO participated in the Progressive Party's Aleksandar Vučić — Future We Believe In list for the 2014 parliamentary election. Jugović received the twenty-second position on the list and was easily returned when the alliance won a majority with 158 out of 250 seats.^[16] He subsequently announced that the SPO would support Vučić's administration in the assembly.^[17] From 2012 to 2016, Jugović was the leader of the SPO–Christian Democratic Party of Serbia parliamentary group. He called for changes to the Constitution of Serbia in 2015, saying that the number of deputies in the assembly needed to be reduced and the manner of election changed. As he had done in previous years, he also called for Serbia's secret service files to be opened.^[18][19][20]

He was re-elected to another term in the National Assembly in the 2016 election after receiving the seventy-first position on the Progressive Party's coalition list, which won a second consecutive majority with 131 seats.^[21] The SPO served in the Progressive Party's caucus in the 2016–20 parliament. Jugović was a member of the parliamentary culture and information committee and a deputy member of the committee on science, education, technological development, and the information society.^[22] In 2015, he was part of Serbia's delegation to the United States of America's sixty-third annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C.^[23]

Jugović received the ninety-eighth position on the Progressive Party's Aleksandar Vučić — For Our Children list in the 2020 election^[24] and was elected to a fifth term when the list won a landslide majority with 188 mandates. He is currently a member of the assembly's environmental protection committee.^[25]

References

1. ALEKSANDAR JUGOVIĆ, Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 23 August 2017.
2. "Pogubno osećanje savršenosti", Danas, 27 December 2015, accessed 23 August 2017.
3. D. BOGUTOVIĆ, "Aleksandar Jugović: I Morava se buni protiv zla", Novosti, 18 November 2016, accessed 23 August 2017.
4. Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 28. децембра 2003. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (СРПСКИ ПОКРЕТ ОБНОВЕ - НОВА СРБИЈА - ВУК ДРАШКОВИЋ - ВЕЛИМИР ИЛИЋ) 2017-07-26 at the Wayback Machine, Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 7 April 2017.
5. 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, accessed 28 February 2017.
6. ALEKSANDAR JUGOVIĆ, Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 23 August 2017.
7. Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. јануара и 8. фебрауара 2007. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (Српски покрет обнове - Вук Драшковић) 2018-04-30 at the Wayback Machine, Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 5 April 2017.
8. Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 11. маја 2008. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (ЗА ЕВРОПСКУ СРБИЈУ - БОРИС ТАДИЋ) 2018-04-30 at the Wayback Machine, Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 5 April 2017.
9. 11 June 2008 legislature, National Assembly of Serbia, accessed 23 August 2017.
10. He made these remarks in the context of criticizing the Serbian Progressive Party, which had just been formed as a breakaway group from the Serbian Radical Party. See "'Interesting' poll conducted by US agency 'shows' most popular Serbian parties," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring European, 31 October 2008 (Source: Glas javnosti, Belgrade, in Serbian 30 Oct 08, p3).
11. "Jugović: Srbija ne sme da slavi 7. jul", Blic (Source: Tanjug), 7 July 2011, accessed 23 August 2017.
12. "Serbian party proposes decentralization of Vojvodina into three regions," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring European, 19 September 2009 (Source: Dnevnik website, Novi Sad, in Serbian 17 Sep 09).
13. "Serbian analysts view Merkel's rumored suggestion to shape Kosovo as federation," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring European, 1 November 2011 (Source: Politika website, Belgrade, in Serbian 28 Oct 11).
14. Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине, 6. мај 2012. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (ЧЕДОМИР ЈОВАНОВИЋ - ПРЕОКРЕТ Либерално демократска партија, Српски покрет обнове, Социјалдемократска унија, Богата Србија, Војвођанска партија, Демократска партија Санџака, Зелена еколошка партија - зелени, Партија Бугара Србије) 2017-09-11 at the Wayback Machine, Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 26 January 2017.
15. Jugović: Tadić da bude na čelu proevropske vlade, Blic (Source: Beta), 27 May 2012, accessed 23 August 2017.
16. Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 16. и 23. марта 2014. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (ALEKSANDAR VUČIĆ - BUDUĆNOST U KOJU VERUJEMO) 2018-05-06 at the Wayback Machine, Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 26 January 2017.
17. "Jugović: Podrška SPO-a Vučiću i programu nove vlade", Blic (Source: Beta), 27 April 2014, accessed 23 August 2017.
18. Nada Kolundžija: Predlog zakona SPO-a liči na revanšizam, Blic (Source: Beta), 16 October 2012, accessed 23 August 2017.
19. Jugović: Nije bilo razgovora o ulasku SPO u vladu, Blic (Source: Tanjug), 20 August 2013, accessed 23 August 2017.
20. "Tim za izmenu političkog sistema: Ustav je prepun grešaka, treba ga menjati", Blic (Source: Tanjug), 23 June 2015, accessed 23 August 2017.
21. Избори за народне посланике 2016. године » Изборне листе (АЛЕКСАНДАР ВУЧИЋ - СРБИЈА ПОБЕЂУЈЕ) 2018-04-27 at the Wayback Machine, Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 17 February 2017.
22. ALEKSANDAR JUGOVIC, National Assembly of Serbia, accessed 23 August 2017.
23. "Delegacija Narodne skupštine na Molitvenom doručku", Blic (Source: Tanjug), 2 February 2015, accessed 23 August 2017.
24. "Ko je sve na listi SNS za republičke poslanike?", Danas, 6 March 2020, accessed 30 June 2020.
25. ALEKSANDAR JUGOVIC, National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, accessed 11 January 2021.