Sajn: Union of Roma Offered Cash for Mihajlovic Top Spot

An agreement among four Roma parties to run on a joint slate in Serbia’s snap parliamentary elections, reached just five days ago, has taken its first public hit. Roma Party leader Srdjan Sajn said today, September 10, in a written statement that his party will not accept the conditions raised at a meeting held the day before in Belgrade. At issue, he said, is who will lead the joint list.

Sajn says the Union of Roma of Serbia insisted at the meeting that its own leader, Milos Mihajlovic, currently a department head at the Commissariat for Refugees and the son of Vitomir Mihajlovic, a former deputy chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Serbia, be named the list’s top candidate. According to Sajn, the Roma Party was also offered money as compensation if it agreed to let Mihajlovic take the top spot.

Why does Sajn accuse the Union of Roma of Serbia?

The dispute comes just days after the agreement on a joint run looked settled. At a meeting held on September 5 in Belgrade, representatives of the Union of Roma of Serbia, the Democratic Union of Roma, the Roma Party and the Civic Movement of Roma of Serbia unanimously accepted the principle of acting together politically. The goal, as announced at the time, was for the Roma community to regain its own representatives in Serbia’s parliament after nearly two decades without them.

Mihajlovic presented that agreement on the morning of September 6, saying:

“At the upcoming elections we want to offer citizens of Roma nationality the chance to give their vote to political representatives of the Roma community.”

Three days later, at a meeting devoted to the actual makeup of the list, negotiations took a different turn, according to Sajn’s account. Instead of dividing up seats along the agreed principles, the table turned, he says, to the question of who would personally lead the list, alongside an offer that, in his telling, came with a price.

Sajn’s statement also raises the question of why Dusko Jovanovic, editor of the radio program at TV Novi Sad, was present at the meeting of Roma parties. According to Sajn, Jovanovic signed coalition agreements with the Socialist Party of Serbia on behalf of the Democratic Union of Roma at previous elections, and it is unclear to him on what basis Jovanovic took part in talks about a joint Roma list.

The Roma Party leader said:

“The Roma Party is not for sale. Mandates are not merchandise, and Roma people are not anyone’s political property.”

As a way out of the dispute, Sajn proposes that none of the top spots on the joint list go to any chairman or leadership member of the three negotiating parties, including himself. That, by his logic, would take the question of personal interest off the table before the list is finalized.

The Union of Roma of Serbia had not responded, as of this article’s publication, to Sajn’s specific claims about the demand for Mihajlovic’s top spot or to the allegation of a cash offer. Mihajlovic’s only public statement on the joint project remains the one from September 6, made before the dispute broke out.

Milos Mihajlovic’s background adds another layer to the dispute. As the son of Vitomir Mihajlovic, a former deputy chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Serbia, and as a sitting department head at the state Commissariat for Refugees, he carries both family and institutional weight within Roma politics, something Sajn’s statement points to indirectly by naming both facts.

The four parties united on the grounds that the Roma community has lacked authentic representatives in the national parliament for nearly two decades. Snap parliamentary elections are set for October 25, leaving negotiators less and less time to settle the dispute over who leads the list before the deadline for submitting election lists runs out. Whether the four parties will still run on a single list, or whether the fight over the top spot will break the September 5 agreement, remains an open question, with an answer expected in the coming days.