Ivan Milutinović

Ivan Milutinović (; born 7 July 1945) is a Serbian politician who served in the Serbian parliament from 1991 to 1993. Originally a member of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), he later joined the Parliamentary People's Party (SNS) and the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS).

Private career Milutinović holds a Doctor of Mechanical Engineering degree and has worked as a university professor. He is from Užice.

Politician SPO parliamentarian Serbian political life in the 1990s was dominated by the authoritarian rule of Slobodan Milošević, leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS).

Milutinović was elected for the Titovo Užice II constituency seat as a SPO candidate in the 1990 Serbian parliamentary election; he finished second against Socialist Party candidate Zoran Vujović in the first round of voting but managed to consolidate the support of various opposition parties to win an upset second-round victory. The Socialists won a landslide majority victory overall with 194 out of 250 seats, while the SPO, with nineteen seats, was the largest opposition group in the assembly.

Milutinović was a frequent critic of the Serbian government during the March 1991 protests in Belgrade. In June 1991, he called for an emergency debate on the difficult state of special-purpose (i.e., military) production factories in Serbia.

In April 1992, Milutinović said that he would not vote for the new constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, on the grounds that it conceded too much power to Montenegro at the expense of Serbia.

Milutinović was among the SPO officials who met with Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia on the latter's visit to Serbia as a private citizen in July 1992. In the same month, he supported the political program put forward by new Yugoslavian prime minister Milan Panić, describing it as "the one that the Serbian Renewal Movement advocated for during the election campaign [...] and all the time after that." He added that he was disappointed Panić did not appoint a "panel of experts" for his cabinet, as had previously been discussed.

In October 1992, Milutinović and another SPO parliamentarian proposed that planned salary increases in the ministries of defence and foreign affairs and in territorial defence be cancelled, with the money to be directed instead toward milk premiums and spending on refugees and health care. While the proposal attracted some attention in the media, it was ultimately not accepted.

The SPO contested the 1992 Serbian parliamentary election as the leading party in the Democratic Movement of Serbia (DEPOS) alliance. Serbia's electoral laws were reformed prior to the vote, such that the republic adopted a system of proportional representation and a "one-third/two-thirds" rule for the distribution of mandates (i.e., one-third of mandates would be assigned to candidates on successful lists in numerical order, with the remaining two-thirds distributed to other candidates at the discretion of the sponsoring parties or coalitions). Milutinović appeared in the third position on the DEPOS list for the Užice constituency. Although DEPOS won six seats in the division, he was not automatically elected, nor was he assigned an "optional" mandate afterward. His term ended when the new assembly convened in January 1993.

Several former SPO parliamentarians, including Milutinović, resigned from the party 1994. In an open letter, they wrote that the party had become "in no way different from the Communist Party from the time of Josip Broz's absolutism" and "a private enterprise of the Drašković family with numerous relatives employed." One year later, Milutinović became a vice-president of a breakaway group called the Parliamentary People's Party (SNS).

DSS politician Milutinović later joined the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and served as vice-president of its municipal board in Užice.

In 2000, the DSS joined the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), a broad and ideologically diverse coalition of parties opposed to Slobodan Milošević's administration. DOS candidate Vojislav Koštunica defeated Milošević in the 2000 Yugoslavian presidential election, and Milošević fell from power on 5 October 2000, a watershed moment in Serbian politics. The DOS also won majority victories in several cities in the 2000 Serbian local elections, which took place concurrently with the Yugoslavian vote. In Užice, the DOS won a landslide majority victory with fifty out of sixty-seven seats. Milutinović was elected as a DOS candidate in the municipality's fifty-fourth division and served in the assembly as a supporter of the local administration.

The local branch of the DSS dismissed Milutinović and an associate from their leadership positions in late 2001, on the charge that they were "privatizing the party and using it for personal purposes." Milutinović later ran for mayor of Užice in the 2004 Serbian local elections as an independent candidate, appearing on the ballot with the designation "Entrepreneurs' Group – Citizens," and finished eighth in a crowded field. (Serbia's local election laws had been reformed prior to this campaign, such that mayors were directly elected and assemblies chosen via proportional representation.)

Milutinović seems to have become reconciled with the DSS after the 2004 campaign. In the 2008 Serbian local elections, he appeared in the twelfth position on a DSS-led coalition electoral list in Užice. The list won seventeen seats, and he was not assigned a mandate.

Serbia's electoral laws were reformed yet again in 2011, such that all mandates in elections held under proportional representation were assigned to candidates on successful lists in numerical order. Milutinović appeared in the sixteen position on the DSS's list for Užice in the 2012 local elections and was not elected when the list fell to seven seats. For the 2016 local elections, he appeared in the thirty-second position on a combined list of the DSS and Dveri and was not elected when the list won only four mandates.

Milutinović was given the sixteenth position on the DSS-led METLA electoral list in the 2020 local elections. The list did not cross the electoral threshold for assembly representation.

Electoral record Local (Užice)

National Assembly of Serbia