Žika Gojković

Gojković was the chair of the SPO's Vojvodina provincial board for several years and was a party vice-president at the republic level.[6]

Gojković was included on the SPO's electoral lists for the 2000, 2003, and 2007 Serbian parliamentary elections, although he did not receive a mandate on any of these occasions.[7] In 2000 and 2007, the SPO failed to cross the electoral threshold. The party contested the 2003 election in an alliance with New Serbia (NS) and won twenty-two seats; Gojković appeared in the forty-ninth position and was not afterward chosen for a mandate. (From 2000 to 2011, assembly 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. Gojković could have been given a mandate despite his relatively low position on the list, but he was not.)[8]

The SPO contested the 2004 Vojvodina provincial election as part of the Clean Hands of Vojvodina coalition. Gojković appeared in the eleventh position on its list, which did not cross the threshold for representation in the provincial assembly.[9]

For the 2008 Serbian parliamentary election, the SPO joined the For a European Serbia (ZES) coalition led by Boris Tadić's Democratic Party (DS). Gojković received the thirty-ninth position on the ZES list, which won 102 seats.[10] On this occasion, he was included in the SPO's assembly delegation.[11] The election did not produce a clear winner, but For a European Serbia ultimately formed a coalition government with the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), and Gojković served as a supporter of the administration. In his first parliamentary term, he was a member of the committee on constitutional affairs, the committee on youth and sports, and the committee on agriculture; a deputy member of the committee on defense and security and the committee on trade and tourism; and a member of the parliamentary friendship groups with Australia, Italy, and the Sovereign Order of Malta.[12]

Serbia's electoral system was reformed in 2011, such that parliamentary mandates were awarded to candidates on successful lists in numerical order.[13] The SPO contested the 2012 parliamentary election in an alliance with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) called U-Turn (Preokret). Gojković received the thirteenth position on the coalition's list and was re-elected when the list won nineteen mandates.[14] The Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) won the election and afterward formed a new coalition government with the SPS and other parties; the SPO served in opposition. Gojković was a member of the committee on the diaspora and Serbs in the region and the committee on finance, budget, and control of public spending; a deputy member of Serbia's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE PA); and a member of the parliamentary friendship groups with Austria and the United States of America.[15]

The SPO joined the SNS's political alliance in the buildup to the 2014 election. Gojković received the forty-first position on the SNS-led Aleksandar Vučić — Future We Believe In list and was easily re-elected when the list won a landslide victory with 158 out of 250 mandates.[16] He again served as a government supporter. In his third term, he was a member of the finance committee and the defense and internal affairs committee, a deputy member of the diaspora committee, the leader of Serbia's friendship group with Brazil, and a member of the friendship groups with France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States.[17]

He received the eighty-second position on the Progressive Party's Aleksandar Vučić – Serbia Is Winning list in 2016 and was re-elected when the alliance won a second consecutive majority with 131 seats.[18] The SPO did not win enough seats to form its own assembly group, and the party's delegates served in caucus with the Progressive Party.[19]

The SPO contested the 2004 Serbian local elections in Sombor in an alliance with the People's Democratic Party (NDS). The alliance won five seats; Gojković appeared on its list and was included afterward in the SPO's municipal assembly group.[20][21] He was re-elected in the 2008, 2012, and 2016 local elections, although on each occasion he resigned his seat shortly thereafter.[22]

Several SPO members, including Gojković, were expelled from the party in May 2017 after recommending that longtime leader Vuk Drašković step down from his position to become an honorary president.[23] The following month, many of these former SPO members established the POKS.[24] The new organization was registered as a party on 17 July 2017, and Gojković was chosen as its leader on 15 October. He continued to caucus with the Progressive Party, noting the POKS's good relations with the SNS and with Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić.[25]

For the 2016–20 parliament, Gojković was a member (and later a deputy member) of the finance committee, a deputy member of the foreign affairs committee, once again the head of Serbia's parliamentary friendship group with Brazil, and a member of its parliamentary friendship groups with France, Georgia, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States.[26][27]

In February 2020, he proposed the direct election of mayors and two-thirds of assembly members in Serbia's local elections.[28]

The POKS contested in the 2020 Serbian parliamentary election on a coalition list called For the Kingdom of Serbia. Gojković was the list bearer, although he agreed to have Ljubinko Đurković appear ahead of him in the first position. The list narrowly missed crossing the electoral threshold to win representation in the assembly.[29]

On 23 December 2021, a group identifying itself as the POKS presidency removed Gojković as leader on the grounds that his four-year term had expired in October.[30][31] POKS official Miloš Parandilović responded that the meeting had been illegitimately convened and that Gojković was still the party's leader.[32]

The anti-Gojković group announced on 28 December that Gojković and his prominent ally Mirko Čikiriz had been expelled from the party.[33][34][35] Gojković's supporters rejected this, indicating that Serbia's ministry of public administration and local self-government had issued a statement the previous day identifying him as the party's only legitimate representative.[36] Gojković's group subsequently held an assembly in Topola on 2 January 2021, at which time he was re-affirmed as party leader. The rival group held an assembly in Belgrade the following day and elected Vojislav Mihailović as leader.[36][37][38][39]

In the aftermath of the split, Mihailović accused Gojković of concealing his appointment by the Serbian government as a director of Mtel, a telecommunications company in Montenegro primarily owned by the state company Telekom Srbija.[40] Mihailovic's supporters further asserted that the appointment was evidence of collusion between Gojković and Vučić's government. Gojković rejected this, saying that he received only minimal compensation for serving as a director (which he had reported in any event) and that it was not evidence of ongoing ties to the SNS.[41]

Gojković announced in February 2022 that his POKS group would contest the upcoming presidential, parliamentary, and Belgrade elections in an alliance with Dveri.[42] He ultimately appeared in the second position on the Dveri–POKS alliance's Patriotic Bloc for the Restoration of the Kingdom of Serbia list in the parliamentary election and was elected to a fifth term when the list won ten mandates.[43] Gojković's POKS group won four seats in total. Shortly after the election, he lost the rights to the party name when Mihailović was recognized as its legitimate leader.[44]

In August 2022, Gojković and two of the other three parliamentarians in his ex-POKS group voted for SNS candidate Vladimir Orlić to become the new president of the national assembly. The fourth ex-POKS delegate, Miloš Parandilović, who had hitherto been one of Gojković's key allies, voted against Orlić.[45] Parandilović later charged Gojković with seeking to join Serbia's SNS-led administration and of surrendering his claim to the POKS leadership after the election, thereby allowing Mihailović to take over the party.[46]

Gojković is now a member of the assembly's defence and internal affairs committee, a member of Serbia's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Francophonie (where Serbia has associate member status), and a member of the friendship groups with Argentina, the Bahamas, Italy, Slovenia, and the United States. He sits in a parliamentary group with members of the Justice and Reconciliation Party (SPP), the United Peasant Party (USS), and the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina (DSHV).[47]