Vucic returns to Seselj, Stojkovic: Serbia still believes in Milosevic-Seselj mythology

Serbian lawyer Cedomir Stojkovic has reacted sharply to the political and ideological climate in Serbia, saying that as long as the country continues to believe in what he calls "Milosevic-Seselj mythology," political decisions will continue to be the same.

His reaction takes on a special context on the eve of early parliamentary elections in Serbia, as Vojislav Seselj's Serbian Radical Party (SRS) has decided to run in the same electoral bloc with the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), while the radicals have expressed support for Aleksandar Vučić as a candidate for prime minister.

"As long as one believes in the Milosevic-Seselj mythology and ideology and in a reality distorted in this way, political decisions will be Milosevic-Seselj," Stojkovic wrote.

"And with them come the consequences. And there are no exceptions here. This does not depend on whether someone is a professor, a student or a miner," he added.

The electoral alliance of the SNS with Seselj's radicals has also brought Vučić's political past back into focus.

The current President of Serbia built an important part of his political career precisely in the Serbian Radical Party.

He joined the SRS in 1993, was an MP and later the party's general secretary. In 2008, following a split within the Radicals, Vučić left the SRS and joined the newly formed Serbian Progressive Party.

The cooperation between the SNS and the Radicals has not only been evident at the central level. In this year's local elections in Aranđeloc, Seselj campaigned on the SNS-led list, while the Radicals were part of the joint list "Aleksandar Vučić."

The new rapprochement between Vučić's political force and Šešelj's party has been commented on in critical tones even by independent media in Serbia.

Media Against Power, citing political analysts, wrote that Vučić is increasingly returning to the political model of the Radical Party and the methods of his former political mentor, Vojislav Šešelj.

They have published critical positions on the use of nationalism and the legacy of the 90s in current Serbian politics, linking today's rhetoric to the period when Vučić was one of the important figures of the radicals.

Seselj, who was one of the leading figures of Serbian nationalism during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, was sentenced in 2018 by the International Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals to ten years in prison for inciting the deportation, persecution and displacement of Croats from Hrtkovci to Vojvodina in 1992.

Against this backdrop, Stojkovic's statement about the "Milosevic-Seselj mythology" comes at a time when Vucic and his party are entering the elections in the same bloc as Seselj's radicals, more than 15 years after Vucic left the party where he began his political rise.

The GeoPost