Tomislav Nikolić is the incumbent President of Serbia who took office on 31 May 2012 as the successor of Boris Tadic. Formerly, he was president of the National Assembly for 5 days in May 2007 and Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia from 24 March 1998 to 20 November 1999.
Early Life and Education
Tomislav Nikolić was born on 15 February 1952 to father Radomir and mother Zivadinka in a Yugoslavian city called Kragujevac. As a child, Nikolić was engaged in athletics and went to a technical school.
Personal Life
Tomislav Nikolić is married to Dragica with two children.
Career
As Nikolić finished education, he became a cemetery supervisor. Then, he gradually worked his way to land a job in a construction company. In 1978, he started to work as head of Investment and Maintenance Dept. in ’22 December’, a company based in Kragujevac. Later, he became a technical director in a utility service provider.
Always having a deep passion for politics, Nikolić entered the so called dirty game in 1990 as a member of the People’s Radical Party in 1990. A year later, the party collaborated with another Serbian party to form Serbian Radical Party. As both the parties were comparatively small at the moment, Nikolić easily became able to grab the seat of vice president. As the Serbian politics became more liberalized, the party grew. In 1998, Nikolić joined the incumbent Prime Minister’s cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia.
In 2000, Nikolić tried his luck on President’s seat. Unfortunately, he lost the election and decided to run again in 2003. Interestingly, the 2003 election was a winning bid for Nikolić but the results were invalidated as the election turnout was very low. Hence, another election was set in 2004 whereby Nikolić lost to Boris Tadic. Despite these loses, Nikolić was able to join the National Assembly and even become its speaker for five days – he resigned as Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Serbia allied to form a coalition which was supposedly against Nikolić’s will.
In 2008, Nikolić formed a new party in alliance with numerous colleagues and named it the Serbian Progressive Party. As a result, Nikolić was freely able to run for the 2012 presidential elections. He lost to Boris Tadic in the first round with just about 25.05% votes. In the run-off election, Nikolić saw a landslide victory against Tadic with 49.4% votes out of 70% votes counted. Consequently, Nikolić assumed office on 31 May 2012 as the successor of his election opponent Boris Tadic.
Author
Besides politics, Nikolić is an adept writer. Some of his published works are:
- Neither victory nor defeat
- Everything for Kosovo and Metohija
- Abducted victory
- Šešelj for President
- Through the darkness of the media
- The letter with an address
- In the grip of hatred
- I spoke
- The parliamentary walk on torture
- Neo-communist parliament
- Since the beginning
- When the government falls, Milošević falls
- The Trenches in the National Assembly [Source: Wikipedia]
Honours
- Order of Makarios III, Cyprus, 13 January 2013
- Order of Merit, Ukraine,6 June 2013
- Order of the Redeemer, Greece, 18 June 2013
- Order of Glory, Armenia, 11 October 2014
- Order of José Martí, Cuba, 19 May 2015
- National Order of Merit, Algeria, 17 May 2016
- Order of Friendship, Kazakhstan, 24 August 2016
- Order of Prince Henry, Portugal, 25 January 2017 [Source: Wikipedia]
Donald Trump and Tomislav Nikolić
US President Donald Trump and Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić might be expected to get along well in the future, given they haven’t yet confronted each other in a critical way. As of November 2016, Serbian President is planning to invite Trump for an official visit. Likewise, just as many other world leaders, he also congratulated him on a landslide victory. On Serbia’s Statehood Day, Donald Trump sent his wishes to President Nikolić.
