Serbian parliament's speaker and deputy speakers appointed

Dragan Marsicanin (PHOTO: Reuters)

Belgrade, Feb 4, 2004 - Serbian parliament members elected Dragan Marsicanin speaker of the parliament. Marsicanin, a candidate of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), picked up 128 votes from deputies of the DSS, the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), New Serbia (NS) and the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), while the other candidate, Serbian Radical Party's (SRS) Gordana Pop-Lazic, received 81 votes.

The parliament session was attended by 245 of the 250 parliament members, and 36 deputies abstained from voting for the parliament speaker. The first session of the newly-elected Serbian parliament was held on Jan 27 when none of the two candidates for the parliament speaker won the sufficient number of votes. The continuation of the session had been scheduled for Jan 30, but it was cancelled, since no candidate received the majority of votes.

Today's session has been closed with the election of five deputy speakers. The constitutional session is to be continued on Feb 6, when the establishment of parliamentary committees is on the agenda.

The newly-elected deputy speakers of the Serbian parliament are Gordana Pop-Lazic and Stefan Zankov from the SRS, Predrag Markovic from the G17 plus, Vojislav Mihailovic from the SPO-NS Coalition, and Zoran Andjelkovic from the SPS.

The Democratic Party (DS) was the only party which did not have a candidate for the deputy speaker, but the party's caucus whip Boris Tadic said that DS deputies will support all candidates.

All parties in the Serbian parliament formed their caucuses at today's session, except for the DSS.