The news that he is a lawyer Milan Antonijevic candidate Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) for the position of protection commissioner equality it caused stormy reactions on social networks and in the public.
Antonijevic himself confirmed that this is so.
"The procedure is such that political parties propose independent candidates who are not their members," Antonijević told FoNet.
He stated that he has no problem with being nominated by the Serbian Progressive Party, pointing out that the hunt against him has been going on for several years.
"There won't be any burden on me considering how long the chase is going on, and to which no one has reacted from any side - not from former friends, not from colleagues, anyone," said Antonijević.
Antonijevic's "new suit"
And the "hunt against him" began the moment he "transformed" - and from a former critic of the government, he became a defender of its moves.
The former director of the Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights (YUCOM), former executive director of the Foundation for an Open Society Serbia and also a former critic of the government of Aleksandar Vučić, in the meantime "put on a new suit" and turned his rhetoric to justifying the moves the government is making.
His transformation began in 2020, and heated up in 2021, when on January 9, 2021, he congratulated the Day of the Republic of Srpska.
That's when the criticisms about him started.
"I wish all my friends and neighbors from Republika Srpska to celebrate this day, gather strength and fight every day for the right to live in peace in a functional state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, without corruption, hatred and populism. You deserve it, a quarter of a century since the end of that bloody war," wrote Antonijević on the X social network in Cyrillic.
Four days later, after the numerous criticisms he experienced online, he issued an apology, this time in English.
He wrote, among other things, that his announcement was not "support or celebration of the creation of an entity through war, bloodshed and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people."
Apology after apology
Another apology from Antonijević came a few weeks earlier, on Human Rights Day on December 10, 2020. The apology at that time referred to the dialogue held more than a year earlier between the authorities and the opposition on election conditions in September 2019 at the Faculty of Political Sciences, which Antonijević initiated.
"You can't ask for anything in life without offering something equally valuable. I apologize. I apologize for thinking that it is possible to change everything in one move, that it is possible to create energy sufficient for change in a limited time. I'm sorry, Serbia, I admit all the mistakes in the dialogue that we persistently conducted (...)", said, among other things, in December 2020, Antonijević, then executive director of the Foundation for Open Society Serbia.
At the beginning of 2021, he announced that he was stepping down from the position of executive director of this Foundation "for private reasons".
New offer of the function in sequence
Next year, in 2022, there was speculation that he could become the new minister for European integration. He then stated that, if he agreed with the goals of the future executive power, he would not mind being part of the new Government of Serbia.
He did not become a minister then.
And the next year, in 2023, he was among the candidates for the position, when he found himself among the potential names for the new ombudsman. He did not get that position either.
In the meantime, he used to criticize the government of Aleksandar Vučić, and lately he has been praising it more and more often.
Biography excerpt
Milan Antonijević was born in 1975 in Belgrade, where he graduated from the Third Belgrade High School and graduated from the Faculty of Law.
He later graduated from the Human Rights School of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights.
He was a scholarship recipient of the British Embassy and at Bradford University he attended master's studies at the Department of Peace Studies majoring in Conflict Prevention, Using Democracy to Achieve Peace. Then he was a doctoral student at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade.
From 2001 to 2018, he worked in the Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights - YUCOM, of which he was also the director.
Who else is among the candidates?
So far, only two names have been released. Apart from Antonijević, Milena Vasić, the current program director, also ran for the position of commissioner for the protection of equality. YUCOM-and.
Milena Vasić, lawyer and lawyer, was nominated by the parliamentary group for the position of new commissioner for the protection of equality Green-left front (ZLF). Her candidacy was supported by 60 civil society organizations, among them the Fund for Humanitarian Law, CRTA, NUNS, Women in Black and Civic Initiatives.
YUCOM announced that it supports the candidacy of its program director, Milena Vasić, for the position of Serbia's Commissioner for the Protection of Equality.
"During her career, she participated in more than 40 projects focused on the rule of law, the protection of victims of discrimination and the rights of minorities, especially the rights of women and the LGBT community," the announcement reads.
The current commissioner for the protection of equality Brankica Janković's second mandate expires this month and she has no right to another candidacy.
