Saša Radulović

Saša Radulović (Serbian Cyrillic: Саша Радуловић, pronounced [sâʃa radǔːloʋit͜ɕ] or [râduloʋit͜ɕ]; born 7 June 1965)[1] is a Serbian engineer, economist and politician. He is a former Minister of Economy of Serbia[2] and the president of Enough is Enough, a political movement in Serbia, for whom he ran for president in the 2017 Serbian presidential election. He served as a member of the National Assembly of Serbia from 2016 to 2020.

Saša Radulović Саша Радуловић
Radulović at the "Privreda Srbije na raskrsnici" (Serbia's Economy at a Crossroads) roundtable in December 2013.
Minister of Economy
In office 2 September 2013 – 24 January 2014
Prime Minister	Ivica Dačić
Preceded by	Mlađan Dinkić
Succeeded by	Igor Mirović (acting)
Personal details
Born	7 June 1965 Bihać, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia
Nationality	Serbian
Political party	Independent (2013–2014) Enough is Enough (2014–present)
Alma mater	University of Sarajevo
Occupation	Tax advisor Trustee in bankruptcy
Profession	Electronics engineer
Signature

Early life

Born in Bihać to a Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officer father, Radulović graduated from the University of Sarajevo's Faculty of Electrical Engineering, specializing in automation and electronics.[2]

In the 1980s, Radulović was part of the New Primitivism cultural movement created in Sarajevo, together with Emir Kusturica and members of the rock band Zabranjeno Pušenje. His close associate Dušan Pavlović also comes from 1980s Yugoslav pop culture, as a former member of the Belgrade-based band Vampiri.[3]

His father, Budimir Radulović (Chief of the Army Medical Corps and other authorities), was killed on May 3, 1992 in the Yugoslav People's Army column incident in Sarajevo.[4]

He emigrated from the Socialist Republic of Serbia at the end of the 1980s. He lived and worked in several countries, including the United States, Canada, and Germany.

Professional career

In 1989, Radulović emigrated from Yugoslavia to Germany.[5] The following year, he began working at Siemens AG on system monitoring for nuclear plants located in Germany, United States, and Russia.[2] The job required him to move to the U.S.

In 1994, he began working in Toronto, Canada, for Antares Alliance, a subsidiary of Amdahl/EDS, as a relational database development team manager, before switching to Interpro Medical Network,[2] initially as vice president of development, and then as one of the members the Board of Directors. From 1997 to 2001 he was the general manager of the company dealing with servers for TrueSpectre pictures. Together with colleagues from the company, he designed the architecture and algorithms that process images on the servers. From 2002 to 2006 he was an advisor to several investment companies.

Radulović came back to Serbia from the United States in 2005, and became a pioneer blogger, writing on economics, business and tax reforms.[3] Professionally, he owned a company and worked as bankruptcy trustee for several other companies. He is licensed as a bankruptcy trustee and portfolio manager.

Radulović worked as Advisor to the Council of Europe, OSCE, US Embassy, GIZ, NALED, and the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises.[2] He also provided training to the Serbian police and prosecutors on how to prosecute financial crimes.[3]

Minister of Economy

In August 2013, Radulović was appointed as non-partisan Minister of Economy in the SNS-led government. During his brief tenure, he attempted to pass a new labor law package, which was initially supported by the government.[6] Radulović's labor package proposed significant changes in labor union laws, such that labor union leaders would lose legal protections.[7] The package also included some austerity measures, such as allowing employers to reduce compensation for annual leave, and for the reduction of sick leave provided that a bonus is paid during the year.[7] The package was intensely opposed by Serbian labor union leaders, as the Federation of Independent Unions and the United Branch Union "Independence" both called for Radulović to resign due to his proposals.[8] However, in January 2014, the government scrapped the Radulović package and began re-drafting.[9] As a result of the government's rejection of his package, Radulović resigned from his position as Minister.[9]

He came to the fore for a text in the magazine Nedeljnik in which he fiercely criticized their former economic policy in Serbia, including the privatization process and the associated corruption. The text is often cited not only in Serbian, but also in the media other former Yugoslav states.[10] He was openly criticized by Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić when he resigned.[3] Radulović resigned from the post of Minister filed on 24 January 2014.[11]

Political career

On 2 February 2014, Radulović announced that he would participate in the parliamentary elections on 16 March 2014 with his own list.[12][13] His movement Dosta je bilo (Enough is Enough) garnered 74,973 votes (2.09%), remaining below the 5% threshold. His list had been the only one to publish a consolidated electoral programme with action plans on different policy areas.[3]

At the 2016 Serbian parliamentary election, his movement Dosta je bilo tripled its support and with 6.02% of votes it obtained 16 seats. Radulović became a member of the parliament and the leader of the Enough is Enough parliamentary group.[14]

2017 presidential campaign

Radulović initially did not prioritize running for president, as he first proposed that Saša Janković and Vuk Jeremić come to an agreement on a "united candidate" against Aleksandar Vučić.[15] In his case for uniting the opposition, Radulović argued that "Enough is Enough is the leader of the center, Vuk Jeremić is the new leader of the right of center, and Saša Janković - left of center."[16] Večernje Novosti reported that Janković rejected the offer, while Jeremić's campaign allegedly did not respond.[15] On March 2, 2017, Radulović announced his candidacy for the Serbian presidential election, only a month before the election.[17] A week before the election, Nedeljnik published an essay written by Radulović, titled "When I become president", in an appeal to the voters.[18] In the essay, he argued against party employment and outlines some of his ideas on welfare and taxes:

"When we stop the robbery through party employment and subsidies, when we consider the parasitical system which destroys us, we will be able to bring back the taken pensions, raise payments for education workers, for the army, police, and public sector, reduce taxes by a third for the economy to breathe, we will be able to instate a universal social protection and guaranteed basic pensions for all citizens in Serbia who turn 65 years old. We want a human and responsible society which cares about its citizens."[18]

Radulović ended up with 1.41% of the national vote.[19] Vladimir Vuletić, a sociology professor at the University of Belgrade, commented that "after last year's parliamentary election, it seemed that [Radulović] represented some kind of future of the opposition. Now that ambition and hope has completely collapsed."[20]

Economic views

Although Radulović was not able to pass his ideas through the government during his tenure as Minister of Economy, he elaborated on his economic views for B92's blog in June 2013, in a post called "Which economic measures do we need?".[21] His post had seven sections, each devoted to a different topic. In the first section, titled "How to save the economy", he summarized some of his key points with the following:

"We don't need re-industrialization. We don't need subsidies. We don't need the state to invest into the economy. Only in infrastructure. Abolish National Investment Plans (NIP) for good."[21]

Later in the first section, he said that there should be "draconic" consequences for false financial reporting.[21] He argued that all businesses in reconstruction should be sent to bankruptcy, except for public companies, for whom he wrote a deadline of three months should be given to list their financial responsibilities and their assets in exchange for reconstruction.[21] He wrote that the Republic of Serbia's Fund for Development should be abolished,[21] and argued against the creation of a development bank in Serbia.[21] He wrote in favor of investment funds as an alternative to a development bank, and that the state should "offer them a portion of capital" in exchange for their investments.[21] The first section was concluded with criticism for monopolies and corporate merging in Serbia.[21]

In the second section, he wrote about tax policy and compensation in public companies. He wrote that salaries in public companies should be reduced by 10 to 20 percent assuming no workers are laid off.[21] However, Radulović wrote that if workers are laid off, any salary reduction should take the layoffs in account such that the more layoffs, the less reductions in salary should be made.[21] He called for the lowest tier of the value-added tax to be raised from 8% to 10%.[21] For corporations, he wrote that taxes on corporate profits should be raised from 15% to 20%.[21]

Political positions

In the beginning of his political career he was know for moderately liberal political and economic positions. Since 2018. and hiatus in the Movement, his positions have took a hard turn toward conservativism, identitarianism, and alt-right anti-immigrant ideology. Since early 2019. he and members of the Movement refer to themselves as "Suverenisti",[22] which is a loose translation of sovereign citizen. Similarly to them, he and his movement deny legal power of laws that contradict their interpretation of the Constitution of Serbia. He is known for promoting conspiracy theories and accusing political opponents of treason and collaboration with "occupiers and colonizers".[22]

Breakup of Yugoslavia

In an interview with Nedeljnik from April 2016, Radulović talked about his childhood in Bosnia, his father's death in a confrontation by the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and war crimes.[5] When commenting on the Bosnian War, he talked about the denial and justification of war crimes in the Balkans:

"Something that hurts me the most out of all of this is when any side tries to justify a war crime with another war crime. And then remark, 'This war crime did happen, but that was because there was another war crime'. That's not human. Every war crime is individual. For every war crime those responsible must be found and punished. And not just for the victims' families, but for society as a whole...when I recognize war crimes committed by those who presented themselves as the Serbian side, in that moment I will not speak about war crimes done unto us [Serbs]. If we do that, we are trivializing war crimes."[5]

On 6 March 2018, Radulović resigned the post of the President of the Enough is Enough movement.[23] He reassumed the post of movement's president just a year later.

Covid-19 Pandemic

Radulović is one of the most vocal proponents of various conspiracy theories surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, and often shares on Twitter various QAnon related materials. As a former cabinet minister, he is the most prominent detractor of all measures implemented against the spread of novel coronavirus, and describes wearing of masks as submissions to slavery, and infringement of the constitutional rights of citizens. His position toward potential vaccines is that they are a tool for population control, along with other antivaxxer positions.

Personal life

He is married and has two children. Apart from his native Serbian language, he speaks English and German. Although Radulović was born in Bihać, he grew up in Sarajevo, where he lived until 1989 when he emigrated to Germany.[5]

References

1. Association „It's Enough — Restart“; Representatives — JMBG
2. „Biografije novih ministara“. Време. 5. септембар 2013.
3. Balkan Insight
4. Tekst Dobrovoljačka Saše Radulovića na blogu B92. Saša Radulović. B92 Blog: Dobrovoljačka (in Serbian). February 6, 2012.
5. Nenad Čaluković (April 26, 2016). "Životna ispovest Saše Radulovića: Kako su mi ubili oca u Dobrovoljačkoj" (in Serbian). Retrieved March 26, 2017.
6. Blic (October 27, 2013). "Ministar Saša Radulović: Vlada stoji iza mene". Retrieved March 31, 2017.
7. Suzana Lakić (January 11, 2014). "Blic: Radulović: Zakon najviše pogađa sindikate". Retrieved March 31, 2017.
8. Politika: Sindikalni front protiv Radulovića. January 16, 2014. Retrieved March 31, 2017.
9. Tanjug (January 28, 2014). "Blic: Radulović objasnio ostavku: Kabinet prvog potpredsednika je glavni kočničar reformi". Retrieved March 31, 2017.
10. "Srpski ministar privrede očitao lekciju cijelom Balkanu" (in Croatian). index.hr. November 10, 2013. Retrieved September 8, 2015.
11. Obrazloženje ostavke Saše Radulovića na mesto Ministra privrede u Vladi Republike Srbije (28. januar 2014)
12. Novi Magazin
13. RTV
14. "Poslanici dobili mandate, ko će sve u klupe". Mondo. 12 May 2016. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
15. "Nedeljnik: Kako je Saša Janković reagovao na ponudu Saše Radulovića" (in Serbian). February 23, 2017. Retrieved April 26, 2017.
16. "Blic: DJB: Petooktobraske stranke i lideri da siđu sa političke scene" (in Serbian). February 24, 2017. Retrieved April 26, 2017.
17. "Saša Radulović kandidat Dosta je bilo za predsednika" (in Serbian). Večernje novosti. 2 March 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
18. Saša Radulović (March 29, 2017). "Nedeljnik: Kad budem predsednik: Esej Saše Radulovića" (in Serbian). Retrieved April 26, 2017.
19. B92: RIK: Konačni rezultat izbora – Vučiću 55,08% (in Serbian). April 20, 2017. Accessed April 26, 2017.
20. B92: Vuletić: Za neke je politička karijera završena (in Serbian). April 3, 2017. Retrieved April 26, 2017.
21. Saša Radulović (June 6, 2013). "Koje ekonomske mere nam trebaju?" (in Serbian). Retrieved April 1, 2017.
22. "Declaration of Suverenisti". DJB. 14 Jun 2020.
23. "Predsedništvo DJB podnelo ostavku, unutarstranački izbori za 60 dana". Danas. 6 March 2018. Retrieved 15 August 2018.

External links

• Saša Radulović at blog.b92.net
• Saša Radulović at linkedin.com
• Saša Radulović on Facebook
• Saša Radulović on Twitter