Former DSS leader Koštunica leaves party

Former DSS leader Koštunica leaves party

Koštunica said that turning to the idea of ​​"sovereignism" cannot be a substitute for political neutrality, and that, in his opinion, the move represented "an essential betrayal of the party program."

"The recent assembly of the DSS showed that the party, for pragmatic and supposedly tactical reasons, wants to turn to the idea of ​​'sovereignism', which in politics has various and ambiguous meanings. It cannot be a substitute for political neutrality, a clear and decisive Serb viewpoint and position that Serbia, while working with everyone, must under no circumstances become a member of the EU," he told the Beta news agency.

"I consider this an essential betrayal of the program, and I decided to leave the DSS. I would like to thank all the friends who fought for the ideas based on which the Democratic Party of Serbia came to be, and based on which it acted," he said.

Koštunica noted that it has been more than half a year since he resigned as president of the DSS and retired from political life.

He added that during this time he was not making any statements, save for his response to a letter from the Executive Committee of the DSS.

"Through all the pressure, temptations, and under the most difficult of circumstances, the democratic and national identity of the party and its state-building policy was forged. The strongest expression and symbol of that policy today is the idea of ​​political neutrality," said Koštunica.

According to him, it is an idea whose value is confirmed by the increasingly frequent warnings and threats coming from the EU and major Western embassies in Belgrade that Serbia "cannot be neutral but must instead continue to prove its unconditional loyalty to the so-called Euro-Atlantic community, and do that to his own detriment."

On Sunday, the assembly of the DSS elected Sanda Rašković-Ivić as the party's new leader. She convincingly defeated her rival Miloš Aligrudić.

Rašković-Ivić reacted to the news that Koštunica was leaving the DSS to say she was sorry to see him go, at the same time accusing him of "failing the membership, because he left when it is the hardest."

In a statement for Tanjug she denied that the party under her leadership will deviate from its previous political agenda.

"I responsibly claim that we have not departed from the political program. I received a two-thirds majority in the assembly and certainly would not have gotten it if the party had abandoned its political programs," Rašković-Ivić said and urged DSS members to remain united.

Koštunica stepped down as DSS leader on March 19, three days after the party failed to win any seats in Serbia's parliament.

He was at the DSS helm since its founding 22 years ago.

Before that, Koštunica was among the founders of the renewed Democratic Party (DS) in 1989, and was for a time one of its vice-presidents.

The high point of his political career came in 2000 when he ran on the opposition ticket and defeated Slobodan Milošević to become president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ), and remain in that position until July 2003.

In March 2004, he became the prime minister of Serbia, and served once again in that position from 2007 until 2008. In March 2008 he called early elections, after which his party joined the opposition.

In early parliamentary elections on March 16, 2014, the DSS won 4.24 percent of the vote and for the first time failed to win parliament seats.