Žika Gojković

Žika Gojković (Serbian Cyrillic: Жика Гојковић; born 9 November 1972) is a Serbian politician. He served in the National Assembly of Serbia from 2008 to 2020. At one time a leading figure in the Serbian Renewal Movement (Srpski pokret obnove, SPO), he has been the leader of the breakaway Movement for the Restoration of the Kingdom of Serbia (Pokret obnove Kraljevine Srbije, POKS) since 2017.

Žika Gojković
Жика Гојковић
Gojković in 2017
Member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia
Assumed office
2008
Personal details
Born (1972-11-09) 9 November 1972
Sombor, SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia
Political partySerbian Renewal Movement (1992–2017)
Movement for the Restoration of the Kingdom of Serbia (2017–present)
OccupationPolitician

Early life and private career

Gojković was born in Sombor, Vojvodina, in what was then the Socialist Republic of Serbia in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.[1] He has a Bachelor of Management Studies degree in economy[2] and was elected as president of Sombor's sports association in 2014.[3]

Political career

Serbian Renewal Movement

Gojković was the chair of the SPO's provincial board in Vojvodina for several years and was a vice-president of the party at the republic level.[4]

He was included on the SPO's electoral lists for the 2000, 2003, and 2007 Serbian parliamentary elections, although he did not win a mandate on any of these occasions.[5] The party failed to cross the electoral threshold in 2000 and 2007. It ran in an alliance with New Serbia in 2003 and won twenty-two mandates; Gojković, who received the forty-ninth list position, could have been selected as part of his party's delegation, but he was not. (From 2000 to 2011, 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.)[6]

For the 2008 election, the SPO joined the For a European Serbia list led by Boris Tadić's Democratic Party. Gojković received the thirty-ninth position on its list.[7] The coalition won 102 seats and, this time, he was chosen as part of his party's parliamentary group. The election did not produce a clear winner, but For a European Serbia ultimately formed a coalition government with the Socialist Party of Serbia, and Gojković served as part of its parliamentary majority.

Serbia's electoral system was reformed in 2011, such that parliamentary mandates were awarded in numerical order to candidates on successful lists.[8] For the 2012 parliamentary election, the SPO joined a coalition called Preokret, alternately known in English as Turnover or U-Turn. Gojković received the thirteenth position on the list and was re-elected when it won nineteen mandates.[9] He served in opposition after the election.

The SPO contested the 2014 election as part of the Aleksandar Vučić — Future We Believe In electoral list led by the Serbian Progressive Party. Gojković received the forty-first position on the list and was easily returned when the alliance won a landslide victory with 158 out of 250 mandates.[10] He received the eighty-second position on the successor Aleksandar Vučić – Serbia Is Winning list in 2016 and was re-elected when the alliance won 131 seats.[11] Following the latter election, the SPO parliamentarians sat in caucus with the Progressive Party.[12]

Movement for the Restoration of the Kingdom of Serbia

Several members of the SPO, including Gojković, were expelled from the party in May 2017 after recommending that longtime party leader Vuk Drašković step down from his position to become an honorary president.[13] Several of the expelled members formed the POKS in June of the same year.[14] The party was officially registered on 17 July 2017, and Gojković was chosen as its leader on 15 October. He continued to caucus with the Progressive Party, and, on being chosen as leader of the POKS, indicated his continued support of Serbian president Vučić.[15]

During the 2016–20 parliament, Gojković was a deputy member of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee and the committee on finance, state budget, and control of public spending; the head of Serbia's parliamentary friendship group with Brazil; and a member of its parliamentary friendship groups with France, Georgia, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States of America.[16]

In February 2020, Gojković called for the direct election of mayors and two-thirds of assembly members in Serbia's local elections.[17]

The POKS contested in the 2020 Serbian parliamentary election on a coalition list with other monarchist parties called For the Kingdom of Serbia. Gojković was the list bearer, although he agreed to have Ljubinko Đurković appear ahead of him in the first position. The list narrowly missed the electoral threshold to win representation in the assembly.[18]

References
  1. ŽIKA GOJKOVIĆ, Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 10 May 2017.
  2. ZIKA GOJKOVIC, National Assembly of Serbia, accessed 10 May 2017.
  3. Vinko Janković, "SOMBOR: ŽIKA GOJKOVIĆ NOVI PRESEDNIK SPORTSKOG SAVEZA", srbijasport.net, 24 September 2014, accessed 10 May 2017.
  4. "Žika Gojković novi-stari predsednik vojvođanskog SPO", Blic (Source: Tanjug), 22 November 2015, accessed 10 May 2017. See also "Serbian Renewal Movement re-elects chairman," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring European, 14 May 2005 (Source: FoNet news agency, Belgrade, in Serbian 1536 gmt 14 May 05).
  5. Gojković received the twenty-seventh position in 2000, the forty-ninth in 2003, and the sixth in 2007. See Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 23. децембра 2000. године и 10. јануара 2001. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ („Српски покрет обнове – Вук Драшковић" – Вук Драшковић), Republika Srbija – Republička izborna komisija, accessed 7 April 2017; Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 28. децембра 2003. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (СРПСКИ ПОКРЕТ ОБНОВЕ – НОВА СРБИЈА – ВУК ДРАШКОВИЋ – ВЕЛИМИР ИЛИЋ), Republika Srbija – Republička izborna komisija, accessed 7 April 2017; Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. јануара и 8. фебрауара 2007. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (Српски покрет обнове – Вук Драшковић), Republika Srbija – Republička izborna komisija, accessed 5 April 2017.
  6. 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.
  7. Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 11. маја 2008. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (ЗА ЕВРОПСКУ СРБИЈУ – БОРИС ТАДИЋ), Republika Srbija – Republička izborna komisija, accessed 5 April 2017.
  8. Law on the Election of Members of the Parliament (2000, as amended 2011) (Articles 88 & 92) made available via LegislationOnline, accessed 28 February 2017.
  9. 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), Republika Srbija – Republička izborna komisija, accessed 26 January 2017.
  10. Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 16. и 23. марта 2014. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (ALEKSANDAR VUČIĆ – BUDUĆNOST U KOJU VERUJEMO), Republika Srbija – Republička izborna komisija, accessed 26 January 2017.
  11. Избори за народне посланике 2016. године » Изборне листе (АЛЕКСАНДАР ВУЧИЋ – СРБИЈА ПОБЕЂУЈЕ), Republika Srbija – Republička izborna komisija, accessed 17 February 2017.
  12. ZIKA GOJKOVIC, National Assembly of Serbia, accessed 10 May 2017.
  13. "Pokret obnove kraljevine Srbije postao parlamentarna stranka", N1, 6 June 2017, accessed 19 October 2017.
  14. "Žika Gojković: U Pokret obnove Kraljevine Srbije prelazi 80 odsto SPO-a", Blic (Source: Beta), 5 June 2017, accessed 19 October 2017.
  15. "Pokret obnove Kraljevine Srbije izabrao rukovodstvo", N1, 15 October 2017, accessed 19 October 2017.
  16. ZIKA GOJKOVIC, National Assembly of Serbia, accessed 19 August 2020.
  17. "Pokret obnove kraljevine za direktan izbor gradonačelnika", N1, 7 February 2020, accessed 19 August 2020.
  18. Monarhisti ipak ispod cenzusa i posle ponovljenih izbora, Danas, 2 July 2020, accessed 18 August 2020.
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