Milorad Mirčić (; 22 February 1956 – 9 May 2025) was a Serbian politician. He was the mayor of Novi Sad from 1993 to 1994 and the minister of the Serb diaspora in the Serbian government from 1998 to 2000, and was elected to public office several times at the republican, provincial, and local levels. Mirčić was a member of the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS).
Background Mirčić was born in the village of Maleševci, in what was then the People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. He graduated from the Faculty of Technology in 1986 as an engineer, specializing in the field of synthetic polymers, and worked for many years at Novkabel.MILORAD MIRČIĆ, Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 14 April 2018."Umro Milorad Mirčić, funkcioner radikala i bivši gradonačelnik Novog Sada", 021.rs, 9 May 2025, accessed 18 May 2025.
Politician Early years (1992–1998) Mirčić was the Radical Party's candidate for Novi Sad's fourth division in the May 1992 Vojvodina provincial election and sought election to the Novi Sad city assembly in the concurrent Serbian local elections. He was defeated in both contests.Извештај о укупним резултатима избора за посланике у Скупштину Аутономне Покрајине Војводине 31. маја и 14. јуна 1992. године, , Provincial Election Commission, Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Republic of Serbia, accessed 30 March 2025.Magyar Szó, 25 May 1992, p. 7.Magyar Szó, 12 June 1992, p. 7.Magyar Szó, 16 June 1992, p. 7.
Mayor of Novi Sad Mirčić was elected to the Novi Sad assembly in the December 1992 Serbian local elections. The overall result of the election in the city was a virtual three-way tie between the Radicals, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), and an alliance of Serbia's democratic opposition parties.Magyar Szó, 12 January 1993, p. 7. The Radicals and Socialists formed a coalition government in January 1993, and Mirčić was chosen as assembly president, a position that was at the time equivalent to mayor.Magyar Szó, 14 January 1993, p. 6. He was little known in political circles at the time; Miroslav Negrojević, the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) in Novi Sad, remarked that his only qualification was his membership in the Radical Party.Magyar Szó, 20 January 1993, p. 7.
Mirčić's mayoral term began in the same month that Bill Clinton was inaugurated as president of the United States. Mirčić attracted some notoriety in this period by saying he had two advantages over Clinton: he was younger and more attractive, and he had never cheated on his wife. While in office, he oversaw a campaign to remove the names of Tito and other communist-era officials from the city's infrastructure and replace them with other names from Serbia's past, including those of Četnik officials such as Petar Bojović. He also removed a number of the city's multilingual signs, increased the use of the Cyrillic script, and twinned Novi Sad with Ilioupoli in Greece.
He was defeated in a non-confidence vote in June 1994, having by this time lost the support of the Socialist Party. A writer sympathetic to the Radicals has suggested that Mirčić's continued support for Bosnian Serb forces in the Bosnian War, when the Serbian government was withholding aid and supplies to the Republika Srpska, contributed to his downfall. Mirčić's ill-timed diplomatic visit to Ilioupoli during a period of economic hardship in Novi Sad was also described as a factor.Gordana Jovanović, "Mirčić – The Right Man to Choose," Velika Srbija [Radical Party publication], Volume 11 Number 974 (Novi Sad, September 2000), pp 5–8. The Radicals served in opposition for the remainder of the term.
Parliamentarian Mirčić received the sixth position on the Radical Party's electoral list for Novi Sad in the 1992 Serbian general election, which took place concurrently with the December 1992 local elections.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 20. и 27. децембра 1992. године и 3. јануара 1993. године – ЗБИРНЕ ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (6 Нови Сад), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024. The Radicals won ten seats in the division, and Mirčić was included in his party's assembly delegation.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 20. и 27. децембра 1992. године и 3. јануара 1993. године – РЕЗУЛТАТИ ИЗБОРА (Извештај о укупним резултатима избора за народне посланике у Народну скупштину Републике Србије, одржаних 20. и 27. децембра 1992. године и 3. јануара 1993. године), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024.Bojan Cvejić, "Ko ima najduži staž u skupštinskim klupama?", Danas, 14 April 2016, accessed 14 April 2018.Službeni Glasnik (Republike Srbije), Volume 49 Number 7 (25 January 1993), pp. 193-194. (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.Guide to the Early Election , Ministry of Information of the Republic of Serbia, December 1992, made available by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, accessed 14 July 2017. Mirčić was not automatically elected by virtue of his list position.)
The governing Socialists won the 1992 election but fell short of a majority with 101 seats out of 250. The Radicals finished in second place with seventy-three seats. While the SRS was technically in opposition for the parliament that followed, it initially worked with the Socialists in an informal alliance. The partnership had dissolved by late 1993, however, and a new election was called for December of that year.
Mirčić received the fourth position on the Radical Party's list for Novi Sad in the 1993 parliamentary election.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 19. и 26. децембра 1993. године и 5. јануара 1994. године – ЗБИРНЕ ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (6 Нови Сад), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024. The party won seven seats in the division, and he was again given an "optional" mandate.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 19. и 26. децембра 1993. године и 5. јануара 1994. године – РЕЗУЛТАТИ ИЗБОРА (Извештај о укупним резултатима избора за народне посланике у Народну скупштину Републике Србије, одржаних 19. и 26. децембра 1993. године и 5. јануара 1994. године), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024.Službeni Glasnik (Republike Srbije), Volume 50 Number 11 (25 January 1994), pp. 193-194. The Socialists won the election with 123 out of 250 seats and afterward formed a new government with support from the New Democracy (ND) party. The Radicals fell to thirty-nine seats and remained in opposition.
Mirčić disrupted the proceedings of the assembly in September 1994 to demand an emergency debate on the recent arrest of Radical Party leader Vojislav Šešelj."RADICAL PARTY LEADER SESELJ ARRESTED, SERBIAN ASSEMBLY SESSION INTERRUPTED," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring Service: Central Europe & Balkans, 30 September 1994 (Source: Serbian Radio, Belgrade, in Serbian 1000 gmt 29 Sep 94). When he refused to yield the floor, speaker Dragan Tomić suspended the sitting."RADICAL PARTY DEPUTY DISRUPTS ASSEMBLY SESSION OVER SESELJ ARREST," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring Service: Central Europe & Balkans, 1 October 1994 (Source: Tanjug news agency, Belgrade, in English 1815 gmt 29 Sep 94).
In July 1995, the leadership of the breakaway Serbian Radical Party – Nikola Pašić (SRS-NP) accused Mirčić and two other SRS parliamentarians of physically preventing Radical Party dissident Aleksandar Đurić from entering the assembly."NATIONALIST SUPPORTERS BEAT UP RIVAL POLITICIANS," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring Service: Central Europe & Balkans, 28 July 1995 (Source: Tanjug news agency, Belgrade, in Serbo-Croat 1457 gmt 26 Jul 95). In the same month, the Wall Street Journal quoted Mirčić as saying at a Radical Party rally, "I want to create a country called Greater Serbia, with one parliament, one president, one army. We will not stop till our enemies are crushed."Mark M. Nelson, "Serbia Keeps Its Thumb on Bosnian Scale --- Belgrade Is Always Prepared To Tip Balance of Power," Wall Street Journal, 20 July 1995. This article incorrectly identifies the speaker as "Miroslav Mirčić."
In 1996, after the conclusion of the Bosnian War, Mirčić held a press conference in which he accused Serbian president Slobodan Milošević of planning to assassinate Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić, "because he is afraid that Karadžić might go to the Hague (war crimes tribunal) and tell many unpleasant things there.""SERBIAN RADICALS SAY MILOSEVIC PLANS TO KILL BOSNIAN SERB LEADER," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring Service: Central Europe & Balkans, 13 June 1996 (Source: Beta news agency, Belgrade, in Serbo-Croat 1219 gmt 11 Jun 96).
Cabinet minister (1998–2000) Mirčić received the first position on the Radical Party's list for the smaller, redistributed Novi Sad division in the 1997 Serbian parliamentary election and was automatically re-elected when the list won three mandates.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997. године – ЗБИРНЕ ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (9 Нови Сад), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997. године – РЕЗУЛТАТИ ИЗБОРА (Извештај о укупним резултатима избора за народне посланике у Народну скупштину Републике Србије, одржаних 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997. године (Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997.) године, , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024. The Socialist Party's alliance again won the election with 110 seats, while the Radicals finished second with eighty-two. The Socialists later formed a coalition government with the Yugoslav Left (JUL) and the Radicals after the election, and on 24 March 1998 Mirčić was appointed as minister for the Serb diaspora in the second cabinet of Serbian prime minister Mirko Marjanović."SERBIA GOVERNMENT LIST," Reuters News, 24 March 1998. This press release incorrectly lists his name as "Miroslav Mirčić."
In November 1998, Mirčić gave an interview in which he discussed the position of Serbs in different republics of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He said that the Serb community in Slovenia had been "broken up because no attention [was] being devoted to ethnic minorities," while the government of Croatia, with the support of the western powers, was perpetrating a sham democracy while discriminating against the Serb community in various ways. He added that the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina was similar to that in Croatia and that Serbs in Macedonia were "trying to secure their basic rights and form their association.""Serbs denied rights in former Yugoslav republics - Serbian minister," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring European - Political, 25 November 1998 (Source: Tanjug news agency, Belgrade, in Serbo-Croat 1150 gmt 25 Nov 98). In April 1999, after the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in the Kosovo War, Mirčić said that members of the Serbian national minority in Albania were being forced to flee to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia due to physical threats and blackmail."Serbian ministry says Serb minority in Albania forced to flee," British Broadcasting Corporation Monitoring European - Political, 15 April 1999 (Source: Tanjug news agency, Belgrade, in English 1358 gmt 15 Apr 99).