Nemanja Šarović

Nemanja Šarović (Serbian Cyrillic: Немања Шаровић; born 28 December 1974) is a Serbian politician. He served several terms in the National Assembly of Serbia as a member of the far-right Serbian Radical Party before resigning from the party in July 2020. He is currently the president of the Love, Faith, Hope political movement.[1]

Nemanja Šarović
Немања Шаровић
Šarović in 2011
Personal details
Born (1974-12-28) 28 December 1974
Belgrade, SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia
NationalitySerbian
Political partyLove, Faith, Hope (2020–present)
Serbian Radical Party (1997–2020)
Alma materUniversity of Belgrade

Early life and career

Šarović was born in Belgrade, in what was then the Socialist Republic of Serbia in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, apprenticed in a law office, and worked for two and a half years in Belgrade's first municipal court before entering politics.[2]

Political career

2000–2012

Šarović received the lead position on the Radical Party's electoral list for Serbia's first electoral division (covering Palilula, Stari Grad and other parts of Belgrade) in the 2000 Yugoslavian parliamentary election.[3] The party did not win any seats in the division.[4]

He subsequently received the eighty-first position on the Radical Party's list for the 2000 Serbian parliamentary election, in which the entire country was counted as a single electoral constituency.[5] The party won twenty-three seats, and he was not included in its assembly delegation. (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 mandates to be awarded out of numerical order. Šarović could have been awarded a mandate notwithstanding his position on the list, although in fact he was not.)[6] During this period, he served as leader of the Radical Party's organization in Stari Grad.[7]

Šarović was given the eighty-fifth position on the Radical Party's list in the 2003 Serbian parliamentary election.[8] The party won eight-two seats. Šarović was not initially selected for its assembly delegation but was awarded a mandate on February 12, 2004, as the replacement for another member who had resigned.[9] Despite winning more seats than any other party in the 2003 election, the Radicals fell well short of a majority and ultimately served in opposition. Šarović became the leader of the Radical Party's municipal organization in Belgrade during this time.[10] It was noted in 2005 that he had claimed 1.639.088 dinars for travel expenses between Belgrade and Vranje in the south of Serbia, where he was an organizer on behalf of the Radical Party.[11]

In a 2006 interview with the Mexican newspaper Reforma, Šarović said that the Radical Party was not against Serbia joining the European Union, but that it was not willing to take this step at the price of Serbia giving up its sovereignty over Kosovo. In the same interview, he said that he had been arrested three times since the fall of Slobodan Milošević's government in 2000.[12]

Šarović received the twenty-first position on the Radical Party's list in the 2007 parliamentary election and was again selected for its assembly delegation.[13][14] The party once again won more seats that any other party, fell short of a majority, and served in opposition.

For the 2008 parliamentary election, Šarović was given the tenth position on the Radical list.[15] The party won seventy-eight seats. The results of this election were inconclusive, and discussions took place for a coalition government to be formed by the Radical Party, the Democratic Party of Serbia (Demokratska stranka Srbije, DSS), and the Socialist Party of Serbia. Similar discussions took place at the municipal level in Belgrade. Šarović was not initially selected for another term in the National Assembly but instead chose to focus on the party's organization in Belgrade, where he played a leading role in negotiations with the DSS and the Socialists for a new municipal government.[16] It was rumoured that he would have become city manager of Belgrade had these discussions been successful.[17] Ultimately, however, they were not; the Socialists instead formed a coalition with the For a European Serbia alliance led by the Democratic Party (Demokratska stranka, DS) at both the republic and the municipal level, and the Radicals remained in opposition. Šarović served for a time as Radical Party whip in the Assembly of the City of Belgrade.[18]

In July 2008, Šarović led a march in Belgrade's Vozdovac municipality against the recent arrest of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić.[19]

The Radical Party experienced a serious split in late 2008, with several members joining the more moderate Serbian Progressive Party under the leadership of Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić. Šarović remained with the Radicals and was a vocal critic of the new party.[20] He returned to the National Assembly on December 28, 2009, as the replacement for another member.[21][22]

Following the arrest of former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladić in 2011, Šarović described the victims of the Srebrenica massacre as "casualties of war" and that said he believed in Mladić's innocence. He was quoted as saying, "Those who died in Srebrenica were only those who did not lower their weapons and continued to fight. War is war and these things happen."[23] During this time, Šarović also served as an adviser to Radical Party leader Vojislav Šešelj, who was then facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Netherlands.[24] On one occasion, the tribunal forbade Šešelj from meeting with Šarović because the Šešelj was using the meetings to send out political directives, contrary to these tribunal's rules.[25]

Šarović married Aleksandra Ilić of the rival New Serbia party in 2011.[26] They divorced in 2013.

2012–present

Serbia's electoral system was reformed in 2011, such that parliamentary mandates were awarded in numerical order to candidates on successful lists. Šarović received the fourth position on the Radical Party's list in the 2012 parliamentary election,[27] but the party failed to cross the electoral threshold to win representation in the assembly. He was promoted to the second position in the 2014 election, in which the party once again failed to win representation.[28] He was also the Radical Party's nominee for mayor Belgrade in the 2012 and 2014 local elections; the party did not win any seats in the assembly on either occasion. (The mayor of Belgrade is elected by the assembly, not directly elected.)[29][30]

Šarović took part in protests against the negotiations between the governments of Serbia and Kosovo in 2013 that led to the Brussels Agreement. During one protest, he accused then-Serbian president Nikolić of treason by normalizing relations with Kosovo.[31] After the conclusion of the agreement, then-deputy prime minister Vučić remarked that Šarović had sent him several threatening messages from his personal phone.[32]

Šešelj was allowed to return to Serbia for health reasons in 2014 while his trial was still in progress. Šarović subsequently indicated that Šešelj would not return to The Hague voluntarily.[33]

The Radicals returned to parliament with the 2016 election, winning twenty-two mandates. Šarović, who once again received the second position on the party's list (following Šešelj), was elected to a fourth term.[34] Following the election, Šarović and Nataša Jovanović represented the Radical Party in pro forma discussions with president Tomislav Nikolić on the formation of a new government.[35] The results of the talks were a foregone conclusion; the Progressives and their allies commanded a majority of seats in parliament, and the Radicals once again served in opposition. The Radical delegation used their consultation session to demand that Nikolić resign, and the meeting was reported to have ended after thirty seconds.[36] Later in 2016, Šarović was convicted of burning a flag of the United States of America and issued a suspended sentence.[37]

In 2018, Šešelj was convicted in absentia of inciting war crimes with nationalist speeches in 1992. He was issued a ten-year sentence but was not required to serve any time in prison as he had already spent more than ten years in custody at The Hague. Some parliamentarians called for Šešelj to be expelled from the assembly as a result of his conviction; Šarović has argued that there are no grounds to do this.[38]

During the 2016–20 parliament, Šarović was a member of the assembly's health and family committee and its committee on administrative, budgetary, mandate, and immunity issues; a deputy member of the committee on constitutional and legislative issues, the committee on the diaspora and Serbs in the region, and the committee on Kosovo-Metohija; a deputy member of Serbia's delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (where Serbia has observer status); and a member of the parliamentary friendship groups with China, Greece, Russia, and Venezuela.[39]

Šarović received the seventh position on the Radical Party's list in the 2020 Serbian parliamentary election,[40] in which the Radicals once again fell below the electoral threshold. Šarović resigned from the party shortly thereafter (on 16 July 2020), citing fundamental disagreements with Šešelj on both the party's direction and the political situation in Serbia.[41] He later accused Šešelj of being insufficiently critical of Serbia's Progressive-led administration and rejected rumours that he himself would join the Progressive Party.[42]

References
  1. "Немања Шаровић представио покрет „Љубав, вера, нада"". Politika Online. Retrieved 2020-09-22.
  2. NEMANJA ŠAROVIĆ, Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 15 June 2018.
  3. "КАНДИДАТИ СРПСКА РАДИКАЛНА СТРАНКА ЗА ИЗБОР САВЕЗНИХ ПОСЛАНИІКА У ВЕЋЕ ГРАЂАНА САВЕЗНЕ СКУПШТИНЕ, Velika Srbija [Radical Party publication], September 2000, p. 3.
  4. ИЗБОРИ 2000: ВЕЋЕ РЕПУБЛИКА И ВЕЋЕ ГРАЂАНА САВЕЗНЕ СКУПШТИНЕ, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Department of Statistics (2000), p. 37.
  5. Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 23. децембра 2000. године и 10. јануара 2001. године, ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (Српска радикална странка – др Војислав Шешељ) Archived 2017-03-11 at the Wayback Machine, Republika Srbija - Republička izborna komisija, accessed 17 February 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.
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