Marina Raguš ( Serbian Cyrillic: Марина Рагуш; born 8 July 1969) is a Serbian politician. She is currently serving her fifth term in the National Assembly of Serbia and has been a vice-president (i.e., deputy speaker) of the assembly since March 2024. Formerly a member of the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS), Raguš joined the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in 2021.

Early life and career

Raguš was born in Belgrade, in what was then the Socialist Republic of Serbia in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. She has a bachelor's degree in political science and international relations. ^[1] Raguš worked part-time for Studio B after her graduation and has volunteered for a non-governmental organization called the Institute for the Research of Serbian Suffering in the Twentieth Century. ^[2]

Politician

Serbian Radical Party

Early years (1996–2007)

Raguš began volunteering with the Radical Party in the Belgrade municipality of Voždovac in 1996 and soon began rising in the party's ranks. ^[3] The SRS joined a coalition government in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in August 1999 and received six cabinet portfolios; Raguš was appointed afterward as a deputy minister of information. ^{[4] [5]}

Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milošević was defeated in the 2000 Yugoslavian presidential election and fell from power shortly thereafter. A new Yugoslavian ministry was established in November 2000 that did not include in the Radicals, and Raguš's term as a deputy minister came to an end. She also ran for the City Assembly of Belgrade in Voždovac's tenth division in the 2000 Serbian local elections, which were held concurrently with the presidential vote, and lost to a candidate of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS).

The Serbian government fell after Milošević's defeat in the Yugoslavian election, and a new Serbian parliamentary election was held in December 2000. Raguš appeared in the 172nd position on the Radical Party's electoral list and was not given a mandate when the list won twenty-three seats. ^[6] (From 2000 to 2011, Serbian parliamentary mandates were awarded to sponsoring parties or coalitions rather than to individual candidates, and it was common practice for the mandates to be assigned out of numerical order. Raguš could have been awarded a mandate despite her low position on the list, though ultimately she was not.) ^[7]

In 2005, Raguš became an advisor for international relations in the Belgrade municipality of Zemun, where the Radical Party held power. ^[8]

Parliamentarian (2007–12)

Raguš appeared in the sixteenth position on the SRS's list in the 2007 parliamentary election and was this time included in her party's delegation when the list won eighty-one seats. ^{[9] [10]} Although the Radicals were the largest party in the parliament that followed, they fell well short of a majority and ultimately served in opposition. During her first parliamentary term, Raguš served on the foreign affairs committee and the committee on environmental protection. ^[11]

Raguš was given the twentieth position on the SRS's list In the 2008 parliamentary election and received a mandate for a second term when the list won seventy-eight seats. ^{[12] [13]} The overall results of the election were inconclusive, but the For a European Serbia (ZES) alliance eventually formed a coalition government with the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), and the Radicals remained in opposition. She also appeared in the lead position on the SRS's list for Voždovac in the 2008 Serbian local elections, which were held concurrently with the parliamentary vote; the ZES coalition won twenty-four seats, as against seventeen for the Radicals, and she did not take a seat in the local assembly. ^{[14] [15] [16] [17]} In the republican parliament, she served on the foreign affairs committee and the committee for development and international economic relations. ^[18] She was also a member of SRS leader Vojislav Šešelj's defence committee at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague during this time.

The Radical Party experienced a serious split in late 2008, with several members joining the more moderate Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) under the leadership of Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić. Raguš remained with the Radicals. Her public profile was unexpectedly increased in 2009, when she was the only SRS delegate who was not expelled from a particular session of the Serbian parliament. Her performance in the assembly afterward received a favourable response in the Serbia media, including from sources not normally inclined to support the Radicals. ^[19]

Raguš was considered a rising star in the Radical Party in this period, but she did not remain at the forefront of the party for very long. The municipal government that was formed in Voždovac after the 2008 local elections proved unstable, and a new local election was called for June 2009. Raguš again led the Radical list. ^[20] Weakened by the previous year's split, the party fell to only three mandates. ^[21] This time, she took a seat in the local assembly. ^[22] Post-election negotiations for a municipal government were not successful, and yet another local election was held in December 2009. For this campaign, Raguš appeared in the second position on the SRS list. ^[23] The party continued to lose support and fell below the electoral threshold for assembly representation. ^[24] Raguš began withdrawing from SRS activities after this time, amid rumours that she was unhappy with the party's strategy in the local campaigns. ^{[25] [26]}

She did not appear on the SRS list for the 2012 Serbian parliamentary election, and after the election she said that she was no longer a member of any party. There were rumours that she would cross to the Progressives at this time along with fellow disillusioned Radical Aleksandar Martinović, but this did not occur. ^[27]

Return to political life (2020–present)

After eight years out of political life, Raguš contested the 2020 Serbian parliamentary election on the electoral list of Aleksandar Šapić's Serbian Patriotic Alliance (SPAS), appearing in the second position on its list as a non-party candidate. ^{[28] [29]} The list won eleven seats, and she returned to parliament for a third term. (Serbia's electoral laws had been reformed in 2011, such that all mandates were awarded to candidates on successful lists in numerical order.) She was chosen afterward as the leader of the SPAS parliamentary group. ^[30]

In May 2021, the Serbian Patriotic Alliance merged into the Progressive Party. Raguš became a member of the SNS and was elected to the party's presidency later in the year. ^[31] In the 2020–22 parliament, she was a member of the committee on administrative, budgetary, mandate, and immunity issues, a deputy member of the committee on education, science, technological development, and the information society, the chair of a subcommittee on the information society and digitalization, and a member of Serbia's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation. ^[32]

Raguš received the eighty-sixth position on the SNS-led Together We Can Do Everything coalition list in the 2022 parliamentary election and was re-elected when the list won a plurality victory with 120 out of 250 mandates. ^[33] After the election, she was chosen as deputy leader of the SNS coalition's assembly group. ^[34] She also served as deputy chair of the foreign affairs committee, a deputy member of the European integration committee, and the leader of Serbia's parliamentary friendship group with China. ^[35]

In May 2022, Vojislav Šešelj received a summons to appear before the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (the successor body to the ICTY) to respond to charges concerning the publication of classified information and the names of protected witnesses. The summons also included the names of seven current and former Radical Party officials, including Raguš. ^{[36] [37]} She was ultimately not included in an indictment of SRS officials issued by the court on 11 August 2023. ^[38]

Raguš was promoted to the eighth position on the SNS's Serbia Must Not Stop list in the 2023 Serbian parliamentary election and was elected to a fifth term when the list won a majority victory with 129 seats. ^[39] She was once again chosen as deputy leader of the SNS coalition's assembly group following the election, and on 20 March 2024 she became a deputy speaker of the assembly. She is also the chair of the foreign affairs committee, a member of the committee on the rights of the child, and a deputy member of the culture and information committee. ^{[40] [41]}

Electoral record

Local (City of Belgrade)

References