Seselj: Radicals in coalition with SNS in Belgrade, local elections

“I’ve had talks with (Serbian President) Aleksandar Vucic, (Prime Minister) Ana Brnabic and (SNS Executive Board chair) Darko Glisic and we agreed on the SRS forming a coalition with the SNS for the Belgrade elections and city and municipal elections in Serbia interior. Our representatives will be on the candidate lists and we will participate in the executive power,” Seselj told the pro-government Happy TV.

He explained that the Serbian Radical Party will run independently in the republic and provincial elections, and in coalition with the Serbian Progressive Party in the local elections, because that is where their platforms match.

“We have differences at the republic level and there we will have separate tickets and run in the elections separately. However, if there is need for a broader coalition at the republic level, if the Progressives cannot form the government alone or with the Socialists, it is only then that we are ready to get into the government with them. But definitely never with the pro-West opposition,” said Seselj.

Sarajevo-born Seselj was sentenced under an indictment for inciting war crimes to time served by the Hague Tribunal after spending 10 years in the detention unit in Scheveningen. He was held responsible for the forcible expulsion of ethnic Croats from Serbia’s northern Vojvodina province in the early 1990s. Seselj also organized volunteers for paramilitaries that committed war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. Seselj holds a doctorate of law and served time in jail as a nationalist dissident in Socialist Yugoslavia. He is one of the founders of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party.