Marina Raguš (; born 8 July 1969) is a Serbian politician. She served in the National Assembly of Serbia from 2007 to 2012 as a member of the far-right Serbian Radical Party (Srpska radikalna stranka, SRS) and was re-elected to the assembly in 2020 on the electoral list of the Serbian Patriotic Alliance (Srpski patriotski savez, SPAS). In 2021, she became a member of the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka, SNS).
Early life and career
Raguš was born in Belgrade, in what was then the Socialist Republic of Serbia in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. She has a bachelor's degree in political science and international relations. Raguš began working part-time for Studio B after her graduation; soon after this, she moved to a position in the Yugoslavian ministry of information. She has been active in a non-governmental organization called the Institute for the Research of Serbian Suffering in the Twentieth Century.
Politician
Serbian Radical Party member (1996–2012) Raguš became active with the Radical Party in the Belgrade municipality of Voždovac in 1996. She ran for the City Assembly of Belgrade in Voždovac's tenth division in the 2000 Serbian local elections and lost to a candidate of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (Demokratska opozicija Srbije, DOS). She later appeared in the 172nd position on the Radical Party's electoral list in the 2000 Serbian parliamentary election and was not granted a mandate when the list won twenty-three seats.. (From 2000 to 2011, Serbian parliamentary mandates were awarded to sponsoring parties or coalitions rather than to individual candidates, and it was common practice for the mandates to be assigned out of numerical order. Raguš could have been awarded a mandate despite her low position on the list, although she was not.)
She received the sixteenth position on the SRS's list in the 2007 parliamentary election and was this time included in her party's delegation when the list won eighty-one seats. Although the Radicals were the largest party in the parliament that followed, they fell well short of a majority and ultimately served in opposition. During her first term, Raguš served on the assembly's foreign affairs committee and the committee on environmental protection.
In the 2008 parliamentary election, Raguš was given the twentieth position on the SRS's list and received a mandate for a second term when the list won seventy-eight seats. The overall results of the election were inconclusive, but a coalition government was ultimately formed by the For a European Serbia (Za evropsku Srbiju, ZES) alliance and the Socialist Party of Serbia (Socijalistička partija Srbije, SPS), and the Radicals remained in opposition. Raguš also appeared in the lead position on the SRS's list for Voždovac in the 2008 Serbian local elections, which were held concurrently with the parliamentary vote. ZES won the election, with twenty-four seats against seventeen for the Radicals, and Raguš did not afterward take a seat in the local assembly. In the republican parliament, she served on the foreign affairs committee and the committee for development and international economic relations. She was also a member of SRS leader Vojislav Šešelj's defence committee at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague during this time.
The Radical Party experienced a serious split in late 2008, with several members joining the more moderate Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka, SNS) under the leadership of Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić. Raguš remained with the Radicals. Her public profile was unexpectedly increased in 2009, when she was the only Radical Party delegate not expelled from a particular session of the Serbian parliament. Her performance in the assembly received a favourable response from the media, including from sources not normally inclined to support the Radicals.