Tomislav
"Toma" Nikolić (Serbian Cyrillic: Томислав Николић; born 15 February
1952) is a Serbian politician, President of the Serbian Progressive Party. He
is also a former member of the Serbian Radical Party, where he served as deputy
leader of the party and parliamentary leader during the absence of Vojislav
Šešelj. During his leadership of the party, Nikolić favored pushing the SRS
towards focusing on issues such as poverty and unemployment, rather than
militant nationalism. Nikolić held this post from 23 February 2003 to 6
September 2008, when he resigned following a disagreement with Šešelj regarding
Serbia's relations with the European Union. Nikolić then formed the Serbian
Progressive Party, which several SRS politicians joined.
He
served as President of the National Assembly of Serbia between 8 and 13 May
2007 and was Deputy Prime Minister of FR Yugoslavia in the coalition government
from 1999 to 2000. Nikolić ran for the President of Yugoslavia in the 2000
elections and placed third. As a perennial candidate he also ran three times
for the President of Serbia (in 2003, 2004 and 2008 elections). In 2003 he
garnered the most votes, but the election was cancelled due to low turnout. In
2004 and 2008 he placed second, behind Boris Tadić.
Nikolić
has published thirteen books as of 2005[update]. He and his wife Dragica (née
Ninković) have two sons. Nikolić became a candidate for the 2012 Serbian
Presidential Elections, after the resignation of former president Boris Tadić.
His campaign literature promised that he would be a non-political head of state
who would unite all citizens, as did a speech by his colleague, Aleksandar
Vučić.
Biography
Nikolić
was born in Kragujevac. In the 1990s, he became a member of the People's
Radical Party, which merged with the Serbian Chetnik Movement to form the
Serbian Radical Party. Nikolić became a member of the new party on 23 January
1991. He was soon elected the party's vice-president, and at the last three
Congresses of Serbian Radicals he was elected deputy president. He has been a
deputy in the National Assembly of Serbia since 1991, the only one to be
elected continuously since that year. During the rule of Slobodan Milošević and
the Socialist Party of Serbia, he and Šešelj were sentenced to three months in
prison which he served in Gnjilane. However, in March 1998 Nikolić's Serbian
Radical Party formed a coalition with the Socialist Party of Serbia and Nikolić
became the vice-president of the Government of Serbia and, by the end of 1999,
the vice-president of the Government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Parliamentarians
elected Nikolić the Speaker of Parliament on 8 May 2007, defeating Milena
Milošević of the Democratic Party by 142 to 99 votes out of 244 members of
Parliament. The Democratic Party of Serbia endorsed him. Hajredin Kuci of the
Democratic Party of Kosovo, Ylli Hoxha of the Reformist Party ORA, and Prime
Minister of Kosovo Agim Çeku condemned the election of Nikolić as
"counterproductive and dangerous for Kosovo". On 9 May, Nikolić met
with Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Alekseyev and gave a speech to Parliament in
which he advocated making Serbia part of a Belarus-Russia superstate, saying
that together they would "stand up against the hegemony of America and the
European Union."
He
resigned from his position as speaker on 15 May after the Democratic Party and
the Democratic Party of Serbia formed a preliminary alliance in preparation for
a coalition government. He was the Speaker with the shortest mandate in the
history of parliamentary democracy in the Balkans. Nikolić told the Democratic
parties that if they "peacefully accept" the independence of Kosovo
the Radical Party "will not sit calmly and wait".
On
28 February 2003, about 20 days before the assassination of Serbian Prime
Minister Zoran Đinđić, Nikolić said: "If anyone of you, in the following
month or two, sees Zoran Đinđić, tell him that Tito also had a problem with a
leg before his death". Nikolić stated that Serbian president Boris Tadić
was an Ustasha, and that he was not sorry for the death of Serbian journalist
Slavko Ćuruvija. His public statements include that he still dreams about
Greater Serbia as a state where all Serbs will once live in, and that Russian
troops should be allowed to build a military base in Serbia at the strategic
location Pasuljanske livade.
From : www.wikipedia.org
