Milorad Mirčić (; born 22 February 1956) is čića Serbian politician. He is a prominent figure in the far-right Serbian Radical Party (Srpska radikalna stranka, SRS) and has served several terms as an elected official at the local, provincial, and republic levels. Mirčić was the mayor of Novi Sad from 1993 to 1994 and was minister of the Serb diaspora in the Serbian government from 1998 to 2000. He is now a member of the Novi Sad city assembly.
Early life and private career
Mirčić was born in the village of Maleševci, in what was then the People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. He graduated as an engineer, specializing in the field of synthetic polymers, and worked for many years at Novkabel.
Politician
Early years (1992–98)
Mayor of Novi Sad
Mirčić was elected to the Novi Sad city assembly in the December 1992 Serbian local elections. The Radical Party emerged in a strengthened position in Novi Sad after the elections and formed an administration with the Socialist Party of Serbia (Socijalistička partija Srbije, SPS). Mirčić, who was then little known in political circles, was chosen as assembly president, a position that was at the time equivalent to mayor. His tenure began in the same month that Bill Clinton was inaugurated as president of the United States. Mirčić he attracted some notoriety during this time for saying that he had two advantages over Clinton: he was younger and more attractive, and he had never cheated on his wife.
While in office, Mirčić oversaw a campaign to remove the names of Tito and other communist-era officials from the city's infrastructure and replace them with the names of other figures from Serbia's past, including Četnik officials such as Petar Bojović. He also removed the city's multi-lingual signs, increased the use of the Cyrillic script, and twinned the city with Ilioupoli in Greece.
Mirčić was defeated in a non-confidence vote in June 1994, having by this time lost the support of the Socialist Party. A writer sympathetic to the Radicals has suggested that Mirčić's continued support for Bosnian Serb forces in the Bosnian War, at a time when the Serbian government was withholding aid and supplies from the Republika Srpska, contributed to this outcome. Mirčić's ill-timed diplomatic visit to Ilioupoli at a time of economic hardship in Novi Sad was also described as a factor.<ref>Gordana Jovanović, "Mirčić – The Right Man to Choose," Velika Srbija" [Radical Party publication], Volume 11 Number 974 (Novi Sad, September 2000), pp 5–8.</ref>
Parliamentarian
Mirčić received the sixth position on the Radical Party's electoral list for Novi Sad in the 1992 Serbian general election, which was held concurrently with the December 1992 local elections. The Radicals won ten mandates in the division, and Mirčić was included in the party's assembly delegation.Službeni Glasnik (Republike Srbije), Volume 49 Number 7 (25 January 1993), p. 194. (From 1992 to 2000, Serbia's electoral law stipulated that one-third of parliamentary mandates would be assigned to candidates from successful lists in numerical order, while the remaining two-thirds would be distributed amongst other candidates on the lists at the discretion of the sponsoring parties. It was common practice for the latter mandates to be awarded out of order. Mirčić's list position did not give him the automatic right to a mandate.) The governing Socialist Party won the election but fell short of a majority, with 101 seats out of 250; the Radicals finished in second place with seventy-three seats. While the Radicals were technically an opposition party in the parliament that followed, they initially worked with the Socialists in an informal alliance. By late 1993, however, the parties had turned against each other and new elections were called.
Mirčić received the fourth position on the Radical Party's list for Novi Sad in the 1993 parliamentary election. The party won seven seats in the division, and Mirčić was again given a mandate.Službeni Glasnik (Republike Srbije), Volume 50 Number 11 (25 January 1994), p. 194. The Socialists won the election and formed a coalition with New Democracy (Nova demokratija, ND), while the Radicals again served in opposition. In September 1994, Mirčić disrupted the proceedings of the assembly to demand an emergency debate on the arrest of Radical Party leader Vojislav Šešelj. When Mirčić refused to yield the floor, speaker Dragan Tomić suspended the sitting.