Socialist Party of Serbia

The Socialist Party of Serbia (Serbian: Социјалистичка партија Србије or Socijalistička partija Srbije) is an ultra-nationalist political party in Serbia. It was founded on July 27, 1990, by Slobodan Milošević, as a merger of Milošević's League of Communists of Serbia (Serbian section of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia), and the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Serbia led by Radmila Anđelković. This merger was unusual since, formally, the League of Communists was a part of the League of Socialist Working People.

The party won the first elections in Serbia with 194 out of 250 seats and 46.1% of the popular vote.^[1] From 1992 it governed in coalition with other parties -- initially with the Serbian Radical Party, and from 1993 with the New Democracy Party. They also contested elections in coalition with Yugoslav Left, a party led by Milošević's wife Mirjana Marković.

The party attempted to join Socialist International, and was nearly unanimously rejected, with only two parties voting in favour (PASOK of Greece and the French Socialist Party), while all others (over 160 parties from over 130 countries) voted against. According to , with this decision came a hard and unpleasant letter, in which it accused the SPS for Nationalism, Warmongering, and for the suffering of people.

With the ousting of Milošević in 2000, the party became a part of the opposition. In the 2003 Serbian general elections, the party won 7.6% of the popular vote and 22 out of 250 seats in the National Assembly of Serbia. In 2004, however, its candidate in the presidential election, Ivica Dačić, placed fifth with 3.6% of the vote.

In 2007 parlamentary elections, Socialist Party of Serbia won 16 seats with 227,580 or 5.64 percent of votes. It formed a sole club, with Ivica Dačić as president and Žarko Obradović as vice-president.

External links

• Official web page