Miroslav Negrojević

Miroslav Negrojević (Serbian Cyrillic: Мирослав Негројевић; 1946–2010) was a Serbian medical doctor and politician. He served in the Serbian parliament from 1994 to 1997 and was a deputy mayor of Novi Sad from 1996 to 1997. He entered politics as a member of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), although he left the party in 1997.

Negrojević was born in Aleksinac, in what was then the People's Republic of Serbia in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. His father was incarcerated by Yugoslavia's post-war authorities shortly before his birth; after his father's release, the family moved first to Doboj and then to Zvornik, both in the People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Negrojević completed high school in Zvornik, graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Medicine, and then returned to Zvornik to work as a surgeon. He later completed specialization in urology in Novi Sad and became the head of the city's surgical department, publishing widely in his field.^[1]

Negrojević was chair of the SPO's Novi Sad municipal committee in 1992.^[2] In April of that year, he explained the party's reasons for boycotting the upcoming May 1992 federal and local elections, calling instead for the creation of a constituent assembly.^[3] This demand was not granted, but the SPO nonetheless ended its election boycott later in the year.

The SPO founded a multi-party alliance called the Democratic Movement of Serbia (DEPOS) in 1992; DEPOS, in turn, contested the December 1992 Serbian local elections in Novi Sad in a broader electoral alliance with the Democratic Party (DS) and the Reform Democratic Party of Vojvodina (RDSV). Negrojević was elected to the Novi Sad assembly in this campaign, winning in the city's seventeenth division.^[4] The overall result of the election was a virtual three-way tie between DEPOS and its allies, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), and the Serbian Radical Party (SRS). The Socialists and Radicals formed a coalition government after the election, while DEPOS served in opposition. In January 1993, Negrojević ran as a DEPOS candidate for vice-president of the assembly, a position that was at the time equivalent to deputy mayor, and was defeated.^[5]

Negrojević also appeared in the sixteenth position on DEPOS's electoral list for the Novi Sad division in the 1992 Serbian parliamentary election, which was held concurrently with the municipal vote.^[6] DEPOS won five seats in the division, and he did not receive a mandate.^[7] (From 1992 to 2000, Serbia's electoral law stipulated that one-third of parliamentary mandates would be assigned to candidates from successful lists in numerical order, while the remaining two-thirds would be distributed amongst other candidates at the discretion of the sponsoring parties.^[8] It was common practice for the latter mandates to be awarded out of order. Negrojević could have been chosen for a mandate despite his list position, but this did not happen.)

During this period, Negrojević was involved in recruiting Serb volunteers from the Novi Sad area to serve in the Croatian War and the Bosnian War.^[9]

Negrojević was promoted to the second position on DEPOS's electoral list for Novi Sad in the 1993 Serbian parliamentary election and was elected when the list won four seats in the division.^[10][11][12] The Socialist Party won the election, and the DEPOS coalition dissolved shortly thereafter; most of its delegates, including those elected for the SPO, served in opposition. When the assembly convened in early 1994, Negrojević was appointed as a member of the committee on health, demographic policy, and family.^[13]

In 1996, the SPO joined with the Democratic Party and the Civic Alliance of Serbia (GSS) to form the Together (Zajedno) coalition. The coalition won a majority victory in the Novi Sad city assembly in the 1996 local elections with thirty-nine out of seventy seats.^[14] When the new local assembly met in December 1996, Mihajlo Svilar of the SPO was chosen as the city's mayor, and Negrojević became one of three deputy mayors.^[15]

Ultimately, both Svilar and Negrojević had only brief terms in office. The SPO experienced serious internal divisions after the election, and Svilar and Negrojević emerged as prominent opponents of party leader Vuk Drašković, whom they accused of trying to control the Novi Sad government from Belgrade.^[16] During this period, Svilar also made accusations of corruption at high levels in the city government and threatened to resign from the SPO if differences between the Zajedno parties were not resolved. ^[17] On 3 June 1997, Svilar and Negrojević, along with other delegates, left the main SPO assembly group to form a new group called SPO–Zajedno.^[18] On 17 June 1997, the city assembly voted to remove Svilar as mayor and Negrojević as deputy mayor.^[19]

Svilar and Negrojević subsequently contested the 1997 Serbian parliamentary election on an independent list called "Novi Sad Blok and the Association of War Veterans 1990." Svilar appeared in the lead position, and Negrojević appeared in second place. The list did not win any mandates, and Negrojević's parliamentary term ended in that year.^[20][21]

Negrojević was re-elected to the Novi Sad city assembly in the 2000 Serbian local elections with an endorsement from the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), a coalition of parties opposed the continued rule of SPS leader Slobodan Milošević; the SPO was not part of the coalition.^[22] The DOS won a landslide victory with fifty-nine out of ninety seats in the city assembly, and Negrojević served afterward in an assembly group with members of the Democratic Party.^[23][24] He was not re-elected in the 2004 local elections; available online sources do not indicate if he was a candidate.

While Negrojević was performing a multi-hour surgery, one of his colleagues inadvertently pricked him with a needle from a patient infected with Hepatitis C. Negrojević later developed cancer and died in 2010.^[25]