Mirko Čikiriz

Čikiriz's family has a long history of involvement in Serbian royalist politics. His ancestors in the nineteenth century were supporters of the Karađorđević dynasty, and Draža Mihailović kept his military headquarters in the house of Čikiriz's grandmother for twenty days during World War II. Several members of his family were shot by German forces during the Axis occupation of Serbia.

Čikiriz became politically active with the SPO when multi-party politics were re-introduced to Serbia in 1990. He was arrested along with party leader Vuk Drašković following street protests in June 1993; on his release, he organized further protests for party members still incarcerated. Čikiriz became a member of the SPO Kragujevac city board in 1996, and in 1997–98 he served as secretary of the municipal assembly and the municipal administration in the nearby municipality of Lapovo. He later became president of the party's Kragujevac board and a member of its presidency for the Šumadija District.[3][4]

Čikiriz was an SPO candidate for the national assembly in the parliamentary elections of 2000,[5] 2003,[6] and 2007,[7] although he was not elected on any of those occasions. The SPO list did not cross the electoral threshold in 2000 or 2007. In 2003, the party ran a combined list with New Serbia (Nova Srbija, NS) that won twenty-two seats. Čikiriz appeared in the 114th position on the combined electoral list of the parties and was not afterward included in the SPO's assembly delegation. (From 2000 to 2011, assembly mandates were awarded at the discretion of successful parties, and it was common practice for the mandates to be assigned out of numerical order. Čikiriz could have been awarded a mandate in 2003 notwithstanding his position on the list, but he was not.)[8]

The SPO contested the 2008 Serbian parliamentary election as part of the For a European Serbia (Za evropsku Srbiju, ZES) alliance led by the Democratic Party (Demokratska stranka, DS). Čikiriz was included on the alliance's (mostly alphabetical) list in the 242th position and was given a mandate when ZES won a plurality victory 102 seats out of 250.[9][10] The overall results of the election were inconclusive, but a government was eventually formed by For a European Serbia and the Socialist Party of Serbia (Socijalistička partija Srbije, SPS), and the SPO supported the administration. In his first assembly term, Čikiriz was a member of the legislative committee; a deputy member of the committee on youth and sports, the committee for relations with Serbs outside Serbia, and the poverty reduction committee; and a member of the parliamentary friendship groups with Australia, Belgium, Norway, Portugal.[11]

Čikiriz was also elected to the Kragujevac city assembly in the 2008 Serbian local elections, which the SPO contested on the ZES list.[12][13] His term was brief; he resigned from the city assembly on 10 October 2008.[14]

Serbia's electoral system was reformed in 2011, such that mandates were awarded to candidates on successful lists in numerical order. The SPO contested the 2012 Serbian parliamentary election in an alliance with the Liberal Democratic Party (Liberalno demokratska partija, LDP) known as U-Turn. Čikiriz received the seventeenth position on the coalition's list and was re-elected when it won nineteen seats.[15] A new coalition government was formed after the election by the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka, SNS), the SPS, and other parties, and the SPO served in opposition. In his second term, Čikiriz was a member of the committee on constitutional affairs and legislation and the committee on the rights of the child; a deputy member of the committee on finance, state budget, and control of public spending; a deputy member of the committee on administrative-budgetary and mandate-immunity issues; and a member of the friendship groups with Japan, Slovenia, South Korea, and the Sovereign Order of Malta.[16]

For the 2014 parliamentary election, the SPO formed a new alliance with the Progressive Party. Čikiriz received the ninety-second position on the Aleksandar Vučić — Future We Believe In coalition list[17] and was elected to a third term when the list won a landslide victory with 158 seats. The SPO supported Vučić's administration after the election and Čikiriz again served as a supporter of the ministry. During his third term, he was a member of the committee on constitutional affairs and legislation and the committee on the rights of the child; a deputy member of the committee on administrative-budgetary and mandate-immunity issues, the committee for Kosovo and Metohija, the health and family committee, the committee on defence and internal affairs, and the committee on finance, state 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 friendship groups with Australia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, and the United States of America.[18]

He received the 134th position on the SNS's Aleksandar Vučić – Serbia Is Winning list in the 2016 parliamentary election[19] and narrowly missed re-election when the list won 131 mandates. He was later appointed as a state secretary in Serbia's ministry of justice.[20] As none of the SPO's three elected members left parliament prior to the 2020 election, Čikiriz was unable to enter the assembly as a replacement.

Čikiriz was a vice-president of the SPO at the time that he left the party in 2017.[21]

The SPO split in 2017, and a new party called the Movement for the Restoration of the Kingdom of Serbia (POKS) was formed under Žika Gojković's leadership. Čikiriz joined the POKS, noting that its founders were dissatisfied with Vuk Drašković's continued leadership of SPO but did not want to attempt a disruptive takeover of that party. In leaving the SPO, Čikiriz accused Drašković of singling out the crimes committed by Serb forces in the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s and ignoring the crimes of other sides.[22] The POKS continued to support Serbia's SNS-led administration, and Čikiriz remained in his role as state secretary.

In 2019, the Kragujevac city assembly voted to name an alley after Draža Mihailović. Čikiriz supported this decision, describing both Mihailović's Chetniks and the Yugoslav Partisans as having been anti-fascist forces in World War II.[23]

He appeared in the third position on the POKS's For the Kingdom of Serbia electoral list in the 2020 Serbian parliamentary election.[24] The list narrowly missed crossing the electoral threshold.[25] He also led the POKS's list for Kragujevac in the concurrent 2020 Serbian local elections[26] and was elected when the list won three mandates.[27] Once again, his term in the local assembly was relatively brief. He was appointed as an assistant mayor of Kragujevac on 5 November 2020, with responsibility for co-operation with churches and religious communities; the city's other assistant mayors had been appointed in September, but Čikiriz was required to wait until the end of his term as state secretary before he could formally take the office.[28][29][30] By virtue of holding this executive role, he was required to resign from the city assembly, which he did on 27 November.[31] In May 2021, he oversaw a contract for seven million dollars to be spent on financing and co-financing projects sponsored by the city's different religious communities.[32]

The POKS split into rival factions, respectively led by Žika Gojković and former Belgrade mayor Vojislav Mihailović, in late 2021. Both Gojković and Milhailović claim to be the legitimate leader of the party.[33] Čikiriz is one of Gojković's leading supporters in this struggle.[34][35][36]

Gojković's POKS group contested the 2022 Serbian parliamentary election in an alliance with Dveri, and Čikiriz held the twelfth position on their combined electoral list.[37] The list won ten seats, and Čikiriz was not immediately elected. He may later be able to enter the assembly later in the term as the replacement for another party member.