Margit Savović (; born 8 January 1952) is a Serbian former politician. She was a cabinet minister in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1993 to 1997, responsible for human rights and minority rights. She has also served in the parliaments of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and was briefly part of the Vojvodina provincial government. A member of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) for most of her career, Savović led her own Party of Successful Women (Partija uspešnih žena, PUŽ) in the early 2000s.
Early life and private career Savović was born in Békéscsaba, in what was then the Hungarian People's Republic, to an ethnically Hungarian family that had fled from Budapest. Both of her parents were communists; her father had worked in the ministry of defence, and her mother had been an assistant to László Rajk, who was executed in 1949 but posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.Jasmina Lukač, "Neobaveštena", Danas, 1 November 2012, accessed 9 June 2026. Savović moved to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at age twenty, settling in the town of Palić in the Subotica municipality.Borba, 30 January 2001, p. 12. She holds a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Education in Subotica.Borba, 3 February 2001, p. 5. Her Serbian last name "Savović" is from a former marriage.Geert Hinrich-Ahrens, Diplomacy on the Edge: containment of ethnic conflict and the minorities working group of the conferences of Yugoslavia (Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, 2007), p. 74.
Before her political career, Savović worked at the College of Professional Studies for Teacher Education in Subotica. Unable to return to this position when she left public life, she later taught at the Faculty of Education in Jagodina."Međuvreme", Vreme, 17 November 2004, accessed 9 June 2026.Jasmina Lukač, "Neobaveštena", Danas, 1 November 2012, accessed 9 June 2026.
Editor Savović was appointed as editor of the Hungarian language newspaper Het Nap in 1990 by Radoman Božović, the chair of the executive council of Vojvodina.Borba, 5 March 1993, p. 4. Her appointment was extremely unpopular with the paper's editorial staff, who went on strike shortly thereafter; the strikers demanded her resignation, which she in fact submitted on 17 October 1990.Borba, 17 October 1990, p. 2.Borba, 18 October 1990. p. 5. The Supreme Court of Vojvodina later annulled Savovic's appointment entirely, finding that there had been no public competition for the role and that the executive council had not documented her qualifications for the position.Borba, 18 January 1991, p. 14.
Politician Serbian politics in the 1990s was dominated by the authoritarian rule of Slobodan Milošević, leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia.
Yugoslavian parliamentarian The first elections for the Chamber of Citizens in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia took place in May 1992. Half of the Serbian seats in the federal parliament were determined by first-past-the-post elections in single-member constituency seats, and the other half were determined by proportional representation. Savović appeared in the thirty-fourth position on the Socialist Party's electoral list and was given a mandate when the list won thirty-one proportional seats.Službeni glasnik (Republike Srbije), Volume 48 Number 33 (27 May 1992), p. 2186.Službeni List (Savezne Republike Jugoslavije), Volume 1 Number 9 (5 June 1992), p. 139. (One-third of the "proportional" mandates were assigned to candidates on successful lists in numerical order, while the remaining two-thirds were assigned to other candidates at the discretion of the sponsoring parties or coalitions. Savović's relatively low position on the list did not prevent her election.)Borba, 26 December 1992, p. 5. The Socialists won a majority victory overall, due in part to an opposition boycott.
Savović soon emerged as a prominent critic of Yugoslavian prime minister Milan Panić, who had been appointed earlier in the year with Milošević's blessing but afterward demonstrated an independent policy approach. In an assembly speech on 4 September 1992, Savović strongly criticized Panić's willingness to make concessions at the London Peace Conference on the ongoing Bosnian War.Borba 5 September 1992, p. 4. The following month, she urged the federal parliament to annul a recent agreement between Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on the removal of the Yugoslav Army personnel from the island of Prevlaka, against the backdrop of the Croatian War.Borba, 17 October 1992, p. 4. In November, she supported an unsuccessful vote of non-confidence against Panić.Borba, 3 November 1992, p. 2.
Due to ongoing concerns about the legitimacy of the May 1992 vote, a new Yugoslavian parliamentary election took place in December of the same year. Savović was not a candidate, and her term ended when the new parliament convened in February 1993.
Serbian parliamentarian The 1992 Serbian parliamentary election, which took place concurrently with the December 1992 Yugoslavian vote, was the first republican election in Serbia held under proportional representation. The country was divided into nine electoral divisions; as per existing practice at the federal level, the first one-third of mandates were assigned to candidates on successful lists in numerical order and the remaining two-thirds 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. Savović appeared in the seventh position on the Socialist Party's list for the Zrenjanin division and was assigned a mandate when the list won eight seats.Borba, 8 December 1992, p. 7.Borba, 15 January 1993, p. 6. She took her seat when the assembly met in January 1993; in the assembly, she served on the committee for international relations and the committee for education, physical culture, and sports.Službeni Glasnik (Republike Srbije), Volume 49 Number 9 (28 January 1993), pp. 252, 254. The Socialists won a plurality victory overall and initially governed with informal support from the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS).
The Socialist–Radical alliance broke down later in 1993, and a new Serbian parliamentary election took place in December of that year. Savović was promoted to the sixth position on the Socialist Party's list for Zrenjanin.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 19. и 26. децембра 1993. године и 5. јануара 1994. године – ЗБИРНЕ ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (2 Зрењанин), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024. The list won ten seats in the division; on this occasion, however, she was not assigned a new 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. Her term ended in January 1994.
Member of the Vojvodina executive On 9 February 1993, Savović was appointed to the executive council of Vojvodina as part of Boško Perošević's first government, serving as secretary of national minorities, administration, and regulations. Her appointment was met with strong opposition from the Democratic Fellowship of Vojvodina Hungarians (VMDK), at the time the dominant political party within Vojvodina's Hungarian community. One of the VMDK's representatives, Andor Gazda, described Savović as having the same reputation among Hungarians that Vuk Branković had among Serbs; another representative described her appointment as a provocation toward minority communities.Magyar Szó, 10 February 1993, p. 7.Borba, 10 February 1993, p. 25.
Savović said that she would work to ensure minority communities had "equality in rights and obligations, with the normal possibility of expressing their specificities, such as cultivating language, culture, education, religion, information." She also said that no ethnic cleansing was taking place in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, remarking, "I asked a parliamentary question in the Yugoslav Parliament about it. The answer I received confirmed it."Borba, 22 February 1993, p. 7.
She announced a visit to the village of Hrtkovci in late February 1993, due concerns over the large-scale emigration of Croats from the community.Borba, 26 February 1992, p. 28. By the time the visit took place the following month, she had already been appointed to the federal cabinet. She reiterated her view that there was no ethnic cleansing "except in individual cases" and said that several Croats leaving the area had signed legal contracts to their homes with Serb refugees arriving from Croatia.Borba, 23 March 1993, p. 9. Her claims were met with strong opposition from Vojvodina's Croat leadership, who noted that Croats in Hrtkovci were being intimidated into leaving.Borba, 27 April 1993, p. 25.
Her term in the provincial executive was brief, ending on 30 March 1993 due to her appointment as a federal minister. Her successor was Pavel Domonji.Borba, 31 March 1993, p. 7.
Yugoslavian cabinet minister Minister of Human Rights and Minority Rights Milan Panić stood down as Yugoslavian prime minister on 9 February 1993 and was succeeded by Radoje Kontić. Kontić, in turn, announced a new administration on 2 March 1993; Savović was included in the government as minister of human rights and minority rights.Borba, 4 March 1993, p. 3. As before, her appointment was met with criticism.Borba, 5 March 1993, p. 9. Assistant minister László Józsa resigned later in the month, accusing her of being "devoid of political and statesmanlike wisdom."Borba, 26 March 1993, p. 5. Another assistant minister, Konstantin Obradović, resigned in April, saying, "[Savović's] attitude towards human rights and her understandings are fundamentally different from mine."Borba, 14 April 1993, p. 10.
Savović was asked early in her ministerial term about the status of Kosovo; she responded that it was "an inalienable part of Serbia and Yugoslavia" and that "everything except that can be negotiated with the [Kosovo] Albanians."Borba, 8 April 1993, p. 6. In the same period, she said that Serbia's Hungarian national minority already lived in an autonomous province (i.e., Vojvodina) and that any further concession to autonomy would amount to ghettoization.Borba, 21 April 1993, p. 8. In the buildup to a proposed law on national minorities, she remarked, "there will definitely be no national councils, special statuses, personal, three-level or territorial autonomies, and especially no Kosovo republic."Borba, 13 May 1993, p. 11.
In June 1993, Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) leader Vuk Drašković and his wife Danica were arrested, beaten, and sent to a high-security prison following street protests in Belgrade. When asked about these events, Savović said, "We all witnessed that Vuk Drašković called for the violent overthrow of the government. [...] Whoever fights, must expect to be beaten himself."Borba, 11 June 1993, p. 7. This statement prompted widespread opposition, including from the Committee for the Release of Vuk Drašković, which called for Savović to be removed from office.Borba, 12 June 1993, p. 5. (Drašković and his wife were later released, following an international campaign.)