The Serb Democratic Party ( sr, Српска демократска странка/Srpska demokratska stranka or СДС/SDS) is a
Serb political party in
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its current acting president is Milan Miličević.
In the parliamentary elections of October 2006, the SDS lost its status as the leading party in
Republika Srpska and the main Serb party in Bosnia and Herzegovina to the
Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), led by the
president of Republika Srpska
Milorad Dodik. Despite making minor gains in the 2010 and 2014 elections, by 2018 the party had fallen to below 20% of the parliament, the lowest seat standing in its history.
The party is under sanctions from the
United States for "failing to arrest and turn over war crimes suspects to an international tribunal." The sanctions prohibit any transfer of funds and material from the United States to the SDS and vice versa. The party is on the list of ''Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons'' by the
Office of Foreign Assets Control
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the U.S. Treasury Department. It administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions in support of U.S. national security and foreign policy ob ...
U.S. agency.
History
Establishment
Radovan Karadžić founded the Serb Democratic Party in 1990. The party aimed at unifying the
Bosnian Serb community, as
Jovan Rašković's
Serb Democratic Party did with the Serbs in Croatia, and staying part of Yugoslavia (as the "Third Yugoslavia" with
Serbia and Montenegro
Serbia and Montenegro ( sr, Cрбија и Црна Гора, translit=Srbija i Crna Gora) was a country in Southeast Europe located in the Balkans that existed from 1992 to 2006, following the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yu ...
) in the event of secession by those two republics from the federation.
1991
Throughout September 1991, the SDS began to establish various "
Serb Autonomous Regions" throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the Bosnian parliament voted on sovereignty on 15 October 1991, a separate Serb Assembly was founded on 24 October 1991 in
Banja Luka, in order to exclusively represent the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The following month, Bosnian Serbs held a
referendum which resulted in an overwhelming vote in favor of staying in a federal state with Serbia and Montenegro, as part of Yugoslavia. In December 1991, a top-secret document entitled ‘For the organization and activity of organs of the Serbs people in Bosnia-Herzegovina in extraordinary circumstances’ was drawn up by the SDS leadership. This was a centralized program for the takeover of each municipality in the country, through the creation of shadow governments and para-governmental structures through various "crisis headquarters", and by preparing loyal Serbs for the takeover in co-ordination with the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA).
Ideology
Historically, the party had a strong
ultranationalist,
separatist
Separatism is the advocacy of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental or gender separation from the larger group. As with secession, separatism conventionally refers to full political separation. Groups simply seeking greate ...
and
Islamophobic ideology. Recently, the party switched from
far-right
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...
and adopted more
moderate conservative
Moderate conservatism is a moderate version of conservatism that is less demanding than classical conservatism and has several subtypes such as liberal conservatism.
The term is often used in countries where the political camp is divided into 'l ...
views, with some of those views even going in favor of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a whole, and not just the Republic of Srpska. Perhaps one of the greatest promoters of that approach is
Dragan Mektić, one of the party's high-ranking officials.
List of presidents
Electoral results
Parliamentary elections
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# there is no automatic collision detection,
# so shift texts up or down manually to avoid overlap
Colors=
id:Government value:green legend:Government
id:Opposition value:red legend:Opposition
Define $dx = 25 # shift text to right side of bar
Define $dy = -1 # adjust height
PlotData=
bar:Govern. color:blue width:25 mark:(line,black) align:center fontsize:10
from:22/04/1992 till:05/05/1997 shift:($dx,$dy) color:Government
from:05/05/1997 till:16/01/2001 shift:($dx,$dy) color:Opposition
from:16/01/2001 till:28/02/2006 shift:($dx,$dy) color:Government
from:28/02/2006 till:end shift:($dx,$dy) color: Opposition
Presidential elections
Positions held
Major positions held by Serb Democratic Party members:
References
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Serbian Democratic Party (Bosnia And Herzegovina)
Conservative parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Serbian irredentism
Nationalist parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Political parties in Republika Srpska
Separatism in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Serb political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Serb nationalist parties
National conservative parties
1990 establishments in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Political parties established in 1990