Saša Radulović

Saša Radulović
MP
Radulović at the "Privreda Srbije na raskrsnici" (Serbia's Economy at a Crossroads) roundtable in December 2013.
Minister of Economy
In office
2 September 2013 – 24 January 2014
Prime Minister Ivica Dačić
Preceded by Mlađan Dinkić
Succeeded by Igor Mirović (acting)
Personal details
Born (1965-06-07) 7 June 1965
Bihać, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, SFR Yugoslavia
Nationality Serbian
Political party Nonpartisan (2013–2014)
Enough is Enough (2014–present)
Alma mater University of Sarajevo
Occupation Tax advisor
Trustee in bankruptcy
Profession Electronics engineer
Signature

Saša Radulović (Serbian Cyrillic: Саша Радуловић, pronounced [sâʃa radǔːloʋit͜ɕ] or [râduloʋit͜ɕ]; born 7 June 1965)[1] is a Serbian engineer, economist and politician. He is a former Minister of Economy of Serbia[2] and the former president of Enough is Enough, a political movement in Serbia, for whom he ran for president in the 2017 Serbian presidential election. He has been a member of the National Assembly of Serbia since 2016.

Early life

Born in Bihać to a Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officer father, Radulović graduated from the University of Sarajevo's Faculty of Electrical Engineering, specializing in automation and electronics.[2]

In the 1980s, Radulović was part of the New Primitivism cultural movement created in Sarajevo, together with Emir Kusturica and members of the rock band Zabranjeno Pušenje. His close associate Dušan Pavlović also comes from 1980s Yugoslav pop culture, as a former member of the Belgrade-based band Vampiri.[3]

His father, Dr. Budimir Radulović (Chief of the Army Medical Corps and other authorities), was killed on May 3, 1992 in the Yugoslav People's Army column incident in Sarajevo.[4]

He emigrated from the Socialist Republic of Serbia at the end of the 1980s. He lived and worked in several countries, including the United States, Canada, and Germany.

Professional career

In 1989, Radulović emigrated from Yugoslavia to Germany.[5] The following year, he began working at Siemens AG on system monitoring for nuclear plants located in Germany, United States, and Russia.[2] The job required him to move to the U.S.

In 1994, he began working in Toronto, Canada, for Antares Alliance, a subsidiary of Amdahl/EDS, as a relational database development team manager, before switching to Interpro Medical Network,[2] initially as vice president of development, and then as one of the members the Board of Directors. From 1997 to 2001 he was the general manager of the company dealing with servers for TrueSpectre pictures. Together with colleagues from the company, he designed the architecture and algorithms that process images on the servers. From 2002 to 2006 he was an advisor to several investment companies.

Radulović came back to Serbia from the United States in 2005, and became a pioneer blogger, writing on economics, business and tax reforms.[3] Professionally, he owned a company and worked as bankruptcy trustee for several other companies. He is licensed as a bankruptcy trustee and portfolio manager.

Radulović worked as Advisor to the Council of Europe, OSCE, US Embassy, GIZ, NALED, and the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises.[2] He also provided training to the Serbian police and prosecutors on how to prosecute financial crimes.[3]

Minister of Economy

In August 2013, Radulović was appointed as non-partisan Minister of Economy in the SNS-led government. During his brief tenure, he attempted to pass a new labor law package, which was initially supported by the government.[6] Radulović's labor package proposed significant changes in labor union laws, such that labor union leaders would lose legal protections.[7] The package also included some austerity measures, such as allowing employers to reduce compensation for annual leave, and for the reduction of sick leave provided that a bonus is paid during the year.[7] The package was intensely opposed by Serbian labor union leaders, as the Federation of Independent Unions and the United Branch Union "Independence" both called for Radulović to resign due to his proposals.[8] However, in January 2014, the government scrapped the Radulović package and began re-drafting.[9] As a result of the government's rejection of his package, Radulović resigned from his position as Minister.[9]

He came to the fore for a text in the magazine Nedeljnik in which he fiercely criticized their former economic policy in Serbia, including the privatization process and the associated corruption. The text is often cited not only in Serbian, but also in the media other former Yugoslav states.[10] He was openly criticized by Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić when he resigned.[3] Radulović resigned from the post of Minister filed on 24 January 2014.[11]

Political career

On 2 February 2014, Radulović announced that he would participate in the parliamentary elections on 16 March 2014 with his own list.[12][13] His movement Dosta je bilo (Enough is Enough) garnered 74,973 votes (2.09%), remaining below the 5% threshold. His list had been the only one to publish a consolidated electoral programme with action plans on different policy areas.[3]

At the Serbian parliamentary election, 2016, his movement Dosta je bilo tripled its support and with 6.02% of votes it obtained 16 seats. Radulović became a member of the parliament and the leader of the Enough is Enough parliamentary group.[14]

2017 presidential campaign

Radulović initially did not prioritize running for president, as he first proposed that Saša Janković and Vuk Jeremić come to an agreement on a "united candidate" against Aleksandar Vučić.[15] In his case for uniting the opposition, Radulović argued that "Enough is Enough is the leader of the center, Vuk Jeremić is the new leader of the right of center, and Saša Janković - left of center."[16] Večernje Novosti reported that Janković rejected the offer, while Jeremić's campaign allegedly did not respond.[15] On March 2, 2017, Radulović announced his candidacy for the Serbian presidential election, only a month before the election.[17] A week before the election, Nedeljnik published an essay written by Radulović, titled "When I become president", in an appeal to the voters.[18] In the essay, he argued against party employment and outlines some of his ideas on welfare and taxes:

Radulović ended up with 1.41% of the national vote.[19] Vladimir Vuletić, a sociology professor at the University of Belgrade, commented that "after last year's parliamentary election, it seemed that [Radulović] represented some kind of future of the opposition. Now that ambition and hope has completely collapsed."[20]

Economic views

Although Radulović was not able to pass his ideas through the government during his tenure as Minister of Economy, he elaborated on his economic views for B92's blog in June 2013, in a post called "Which economic measures do we need?".[21] His post had seven sections, each devoted to a different topic. In the first section, titled "How to save the economy", he summarized some of his key points with the following:

Later in the first section, he said that there should be "draconic" consequences for false financial reporting.[21] He argued that all businesses in reconstruction should be sent to bankruptcy, except for public companies, for whom he wrote a deadline of three months should be given to list their financial responsibilities and their assets in exchange for reconstruction.[21] He wrote that the Republic of Serbia's Fund for Development should be abolished,[21] and argued against the creation of a development bank in Serbia.[21] He wrote in favor of investment funds as an alternative to a development bank, and that the state should "offer them a portion of capital" in exchange for their investments.[21] The first section was concluded with criticism for monopolies and corporate merging in Serbia.[21]

In the second section, he wrote about tax policy and compensation in public companies. He wrote that salaries in public companies should be reduced by 10 to 20 percent assuming no workers are laid off.[21] However, Radulović wrote that if workers are laid off, any salary reduction should take the layoffs in account such that the more layoffs, the less reductions in salary should be made.[21] He called for the lowest tier of the value-added tax to be raised from 8% to 10%.[21] For corporations, he wrote that taxes on corporate profits should be raised from 15% to 20%.[21]

Political positions

Breakup of Yugoslavia

In an interview with Nedeljnik from April 2016, Radulović talked about his childhood in Bosnia, his father's death in a confrontation by the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and war crimes.[5] When commenting on the Bosnian War, he talked about the denial and justification of war crimes in the Balkans:

On 6 March 2018, Radulović resigned the post of the President of the Enough is Enough movement.[22]

Personal life

He is married and has two children. Apart from his native Serbian language, he speaks English and German. Although Radulović was born in Bihać, he grew up in Sarajevo, where he lived until 1989 when he emigrated to Germany.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Association „It's Enough — Restart“; Representatives — JMBG
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 „Biografije novih ministara“. Време. 5. септембар 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Balkan Insight
  4. ↑ Tekst Dobrovoljačka Saše Radulovića na blogu B92. Saša Radulović. B92 Blog: Dobrovoljačka (in Serbian). February 6, 2012.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Nenad Čaluković (April 26, 2016). "Životna ispovest Saše Radulovića: Kako su mi ubili oca u Dobrovoljačkoj" (in Serbian). Retrieved March 26, 2017.
  6. ↑ Blic (October 27, 2013). "Ministar Saša Radulović: Vlada stoji iza mene". Retrieved March 31, 2017.
  7. 1 2 Suzana Lakić (January 11, 2014). "Blic: Radulović: Zakon najviše pogađa sindikate". Retrieved March 31, 2017.
  8. ↑ Politika: Sindikalni front protiv Radulovića. January 16, 2014. Retrieved March 31, 2017.
  9. 1 2 Tanjug (January 28, 2014). "Blic: Radulović objasnio ostavku: Kabinet prvog potpredsednika je glavni kočničar reformi". Retrieved March 31, 2017.
  10. ↑ "Srpski ministar privrede očitao lekciju cijelom Balkanu" (in Croatian). index.hr. November 10, 2013. Retrieved September 8, 2015.
  11. ↑ Obrazloženje ostavke Saše Radulovića na mesto Ministra privrede u Vladi Republike Srbije (28. januar 2014)
  12. ↑ Novi Magazin
  13. ↑ RTV
  14. ↑ "Poslanici dobili mandate, ko će sve u klupe". Mondo. 12 May 2016. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  15. 1 2 "Nedeljnik: Kako je Saša Janković reagovao na ponudu Saše Radulovića" (in Serbian). February 23, 2017. Retrieved April 26, 2017.
  16. ↑ "Blic: DJB: Petooktobraske stranke i lideri da siđu sa političke scene" (in Serbian). February 24, 2017. Retrieved April 26, 2017.
  17. ↑ "Saša Radulović kandidat Dosta je bilo za predsednika" (in Serbian). Večernje novosti. 2 March 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  18. 1 2 Saša Radulović (March 29, 2017). "Nedeljnik: Kad budem predsednik: Esej Saše Radulovića" (in Serbian). Retrieved April 26, 2017.
  19. ↑ B92: RIK: Konačni rezultat izbora – Vučiću 55,08% (in Serbian). April 20, 2017. Accessed April 26, 2017.
  20. ↑ B92: Vuletić: Za neke je politička karijera završena (in Serbian). April 3, 2017. Retrieved April 26, 2017.
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Saša Radulović (June 6, 2013). "Koje ekonomske mere nam trebaju?" (in Serbian). Retrieved April 1, 2017.
  22. ↑ "Predsedništvo DJB podnelo ostavku, unutarstranački izbori za 60 dana". Danas. 6 March 2018. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
Political offices
Preceded by
Mlađan Dinkić		 Minister of Economy of Serbia
2013–2014		 Succeeded by
Igor Mirović
(acting)
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