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"Vucic, Alexander"
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Aleksandr Vucic is a Serbian statesman and politician. President of the Republic of Serbia since June 1, 2017.
Secretary General of the National Security Council, Minister of Information and Defense of Serbia, Prime Minister of Serbia (27 April 2014 – 31 May 2017). From 2012 to 2023 he was the leader of the Serbian Progressive Party.
Biography
Born March 5, 1970 in Belgrade, in the family of Angelina and Angelko Vucic.
He was an excellent student in primary and secondary schools. He won city and republican competitions in history. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Belgrade.
Political career
In 1993, Vucic joined the Serbian Radical Party, a far-right party whose ideology was based on Serbian nationalism and the desire for a “Greater Serbia”, and was elected to the National Assembly in the 1993 elections. Two years later, Vucic became secretary general of the PSA. He was one of the SWP volunteers who visited the Republika Srpska army that was besieging Sarajevo. After his party won local elections in Zemun in 1996, he became director of Pinky Hall.
Minister of Information (1998-2000)
In March 1998, Vucic was appointed Minister of Information in the government of Mirko Marjanovic. During Vucic’s tenure as minister, Serbian media were accused of spreading radical ideas of Serbian nationalism and legitimizing war crimes against ethnic minorities.
During his ministerial term, he signed the Public Information Act, which included high fines for journalists whose letters contradicted the policies of the Slobodan Milosevic regime. The fines had to be paid within 24 hours or their property would have been confiscated. As a result, the offices of the Daily Telegraph, European and Our Struggle were closed. All foreign TV channels were removed from cable networks, and terrestrial radio and television stations were banned from rebroadcasting foreign services in Serbian.
Human Rights Watch said five editors of independent newspapers were accused of spreading disinformation because they called Albanians killed in Kosovo "people" rather than "terrorists."
The government crackdown on independent media intensified when NATO forces threatened to intervene in Kosovo in late September and early October 1998. The government also maintained direct control over state-run radio and television, which broadcast news to the majority of Serbia's population.
After the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began in March 1999, Vucic convened all the editors of Belgrade. Print media outlets were ordered to submit all copies of news reports to the ministry for approval and were allowed to publish only official statements and information taken from state-controlled media outlets. Vucic also ordered all journalists from NATO countries, with whom the war was actually fought, to leave the country.
At the time, he was elected to the Board of Directors