Aleksandar Čotrić () is Čotrića politician in Serbia. He has served several 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 Belgrade's municipal government from 1997 to 2000 and a deputy minister in Serbia's government from 2004 to 2007, with responsibility for the Serbian diaspora.
Early life and private career
Čotrić was born in Loznica, in what was then the Socialist Republic of Serbia in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and is a graduate of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law. He has written several books and is a noted composer of aphorisms. In a 2007 interview, he argued that the aphorism ("a sharp proverb with a twist") had become a popular literary form in Serbia by virtue of providing darkly humorous responses to the country's many social and political upheavals. He added that when he published a book of aphorisms in Sweden it failed because "everyone there is too happy." Among the lines credited to Čotrić is, "Why shouldn't we be proud of our past, when each new day is worse than the previous one?"
Political career
The Milošević years
Early years in opposition
From 1990 to 2000, politics in Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were dominated by the Socialist Party of Serbia under the leadership of Slobodan Milošević. Various opposition parties sought to break Milošević's hold on power during these years, often via fragile coalitions with one another.
Čotrić was a founding member of the Serbian Renewal Movement in 1990. He first sought election to the Serbian assembly in the 1992 parliamentary election, appearing in the thirteenth position in the Užice division on the electoral list of the Democratic Movement of Serbia (Demokratski pokret Srbije, DEPOS), a coalition of opposition parties that included the SPO. DEPOS won six mandates in this division, and Čotrić was not included in his party's delegation to the assembly. (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 by the sponsoring parties. Čotrić was not listed high enough to win an automatic mandate, nor was he granted a mandate by the SPO.) He was promoted to the fifth position on the DEPOS list in Užice for the 1993 election; the alliance again won six mandates for the division, and Čotrić was this time selected by the SPO to serve in its delegation. He took his seat when the assembly convened in early 1994.
In September 1994, SPO leader Vuk Drašković promoted Čotrić to the party's executive. The following year, Čotrić accused Serbian police of smuggling petrol and military supplies into the Republika Srpska territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina in defiance of an official blockade; in this context, he urged the government to protect citizens near the Zvornik border crossing from illegal police harassment or, as he said, "we will do it ourselves." In 1996, after the signing of the Dayton Accord and the end of the Bosnian War, Čotrić announced that the SPO would not contest elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the grounds that there were no "media, financial or any other conditions for a democratic vote in either the Republika Srpska or the Muslim-Croat federation."
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 a candidate of the alliance in Belgrade. The group was belatedly recognized as having won the Belgrade election in February 1997, following disputed official results and an extended period of street protests. Čotrić was elected to the city assembly and was subsequently named to Belgrade's executive council as minister of information. He was also appointed to the board of RTV Studio B. In May 1997, he announced that the city would sue the Tanjug state news agency for "carrying vicious lies about the new city authorities" and for not meeting contractual financial obligations. He was quoted as saying, "Over the last three months since the new authorities were installed in Belgrade, Tanjug has not carried a single positive or unbiased piece of news. Only negative commentaries based on fabrications have been carried."
Breakup of Zajedno
The SPO contested the 1997 parliamentary election on its own, and Čotrić was re-elected after receiving the top position on the party's list in the Šabac division.