Dražimir Marušić (; 2 October 1951 – 14 August 2010) was a Serbian politician. He was the mayor of Gornji Milanovac for all but one term between 1992 and his death and served in the Serbian parliament from 1994 to 2001. Marušić was a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS).
Early life and career Marušić was born in the village of Pranjani in the municipality of Gornji Milanovac, in what was then the People's Republic of Serbia in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. He graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law in 1975 and afterward returned to Gornji Milanovac to beginning working for the municipal assembly."Preminuo Predsednik opštine gospodin Dražimir Marušić", Municipality of Gornji Milanovac, accessed 24 January 2026.
Politician Before 1990 Marušić was secretary of the Secretariat for Social and Communal Affairs and Inspection Affairs in the Gornji Milanovac assembly from 1980 to 1989. From 1989 to 1992, he was president of the assembly's executive council."Preminuo Predsednik opštine gospodin Dražimir Marušić", Municipality of Gornji Milanovac, accessed 24 January 2026.
The Milošević Years Serbia transitioned, at least nominally, from a one-party socialist state to a multi-party democracy in 1990, and Marušić became a founding member of the Socialist Party of Serbia in that year. In the decade that followed, the SPS dominated Serbian politics under the authoritarian leadership of Slobodan Milošević. Marušić was elected to the Gornji Milanovac assembly in the May 1992 Serbian local elections and was afterward chosen as its president, a position that was then equivalent to mayor.Borba, 13 January 1993, p. 12.
The May 1992 elections were boycotted by several of Serbia's leading opposition parties, and, due to ongoing doubts about the legitimacy of the vote, a new round of local elections took place in December 1992. The SPS won the repeat elections in Gornji Milanovac; Marušić, who was re-elected to the assembly in the first round of voting,Borba, 13 January 1993, p. 12. was chosen for a second term as mayor.Borba, 27 April 1994, p. 6.
Marušić appeared in the eighth position on the SPS's electoral list for the Kragujevac division in the 1993 Serbian parliamentary election.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 19. и 26. децембра 1993. године и 5. јануара 1994. године – ЗБИРНЕ ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (3 Крагујевац), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024. The list won twelve seats, and he was awarded a mandate in the national assembly.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 19. и 26. децембра 1993. године и 5. јануара 1994. године – РЕЗУЛТАТИ ИЗБОРА (Извештај о укупним резултатима избора за народне посланике у Народну скупштину Републике Србије, одржаних 19. и 26. децембра 1993. године и 5. јануара 1994. године), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024.Službeni Glasnik (Republike Srbije), Volume 50 Number 11 (25 January 1994), pp. 193-194. (From 1992 to 2000, Serbia's electoral law stipulated that one-third of parliamentary mandates would be assigned to candidates from successful lists in numerical order, while the remaining two-thirds would be distributed amongst other candidates at the discretion of the sponsoring parties.Guide to the Early Election, Ministry of Information of the Republic of Serbia, December 1992, made available by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, accessed 14 July 2017. Marušić was not automatically elected by virtue of his list position, but he received a mandate all the same.) The Socialists won a strong plurality victory overall in the 1993 election and afterward formed a new government with support from the smaller New Democracy (ND) party. In the assembly, Marušić served as a member of the finance committee.Službeni Glasnik (Republike Srbije), Volume 50 Number 16 (11 February 1994), p. 355.
In February 1995, Marušić introduced a proposal in the Serbian parliament to allow municipalities to determine the number of seats in their local assemblies, up to a maximum of eighty. He said that there was no reason for the matter to be determined by legislation at the republic level.Borba, 8 February 1995, p. 4.
After the fall of the Republic of Serbian Krajina and the expulsion of much of the area's Serb population in August 1995, Marušić said that the situation ultimately resulted from the "unacceptable behaviour of certain people from the leadership of Krajina and Republika Srpska" who refused to accept diplomatic initiatives supported by Serbia and the Contact Group.Borba, 10 August 1995, p. 3.
Marušić took part in a delegation to Moscow in March 1996 that reviewed previously unopened documents related to the Obrenović dynasty and the First Serbian Uprising. He was responsible for selecting documents from the cache to be photocopied for the benefit of Serbian researchers.Borba, 21 March 1996, p. 9.
The Socialist Party won a majority victory in Gornji Milanovac in the 1996 Serbian local elections, taking forty out of seventy seats.Izbori Za Odbornike Skupština Opština i Gradova u Republici Srbiji, 1996, Bureau of Statistics – Republic of Serbia, p. 78. Marušić was chosen afterward for a third term as mayor. He welcomed a new republican law on local self-government in July 1997 and opposed efforts by some parliamentarians to delegate more power to local authorities. "Only when we have citizens who are one hundred percent loyal to this country can we think about a greater degree of local self-government," he was quoted as saying.Borba, 2 July 1997, p. 1.
The Socialists contested the 1997 Serbian parliamentary election in an alliance with the Yugoslav Left (JUL) and New Democracy. Marušić appeared in the second position on the alliance's list for the smaller, redistributed Čačak division and was given a mandate for a second term when the list won exactly two seats.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997. године – ЗБИРНЕ ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (20 Чачак), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997. године – РЕЗУЛТАТИ ИЗБОРА (Извештај о укупним резултатима избора за народне посланике у Народну скупштину Републике Србије, одржаних 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997. године (Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 21. и 28. септембра и 5. октобра 1997.) године, , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024.PRVA SEDNICA, 03.12.1997., Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 24 January 2026.Borba, 24 October 1997, p. 2. The SPS's alliance won 110 out of 250 seats overall in the national assembly, and in early 1998 the SPS formed a new coalition government with the JUL and the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS).
The Fall of Milošević and After Slobodan Milošević was defeated by Vojislav Koštunica in the 2000 Yugoslavian presidential election and subsequently fell from power on 5 October 2000, a watershed moment in Serbian and Yugoslavian politics. The SPS also lost its hold on power in several municipalities in the concurrent 2000 Serbian local elections. In Gornji Milanovac, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) won seventy-two out of ninety seats in the expanded local assembly, while the SPS–JUL alliance fell to only sixteen.Izbori, 2000. Za Odbornike Skupština Opština i Gradova, Bureau of Statistics – Republic of Serbia, p. 64. Marušić was personally re-elected and served in opposition for the term that followed.
The Serbian government also fell soon after Milošević's defeat, and a transitional government supported by the SPS, the DOS, and the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) took power pending a new parliamentary election. Prior to the vote, Serbia's electoral laws were changed such that the entire country became a single electoral division and all mandates were to be assigned to candidates at the discretion of the sponsoring parties and coalitions, irrespective of numerical order.Serbia's Law on the Election of Representatives (2000) stipulated that parliamentary mandates would be awarded to electoral lists (Article 80) that crossed the electoral threshold (Article 81), that mandates would be given to candidates appearing on the relevant lists (Article 83), and that the submitters of the lists were responsible for selecting their parliamentary delegations within ten days of the final results being published (Article 84). See Law on the Election of Representatives, Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, No. 35/2000, made available via LegislationOnline, , accessed 6 June 2021. Marušić appeared in the 122nd position on the Socialist Party's list (which was mostly alphabetical) in the 2000 Serbian parliamentary election and did not receive a new mandate when the party fell to thirty-seven seats.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 23. децембра 2000. године и 10. јануара 2001. године – ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (3 Социјалистичка партија Србије – Слободан Милошевић), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 April 2024.PRVA KONSTITUTIVNA SEDNICA, 22.01.2001., Otvoreni Parlament, accessed 25 December 2025. He later appeared in the 140th position on the SPS's list for the 2003 Serbian parliamentary election was again not assigned a mandate when the list won twenty-two seats.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 28. децембра 2003. године – ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (9. СОЦИЈАЛИСТИЧКА ПАРТИЈА СРБИЈЕ - СЛОБОДАН МИЛОШЕВИЋ), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 April 2024."Skupština čeka demokrate", , Glas javnosti, 13 January 2004, accessed 9 July 2025.
For the 2004 local elections, Serbia introduced direct elections for mayors and separated the offices of mayor and assembly president. Marušić ran for a new term as mayor of Gornji Milanovac, leading a coalition of the Socialist Party, a local group called "Victory for Gornji Milanovac," and the Party of Sports Supporters of Serbia. He was elected in the second round of voting. Marušić's alliance also won a plurality victory with sixteen out of forty-nine seats in the restructured local assembly; the alliance afterward formed a coalition government with the Serbian Radical Party, Social Democracy (SD), and the Christian Democratic Party of Serbia (DHSS).Lokalni Izbori – Republika Srbija; Lokalni Izbori 2004; Bureau of Statistics, Republic of Serbia; p. 92.Direktorijum lokalnih samouprava u Srbiji, Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID), September 2005, p. 132.
Gornji Milanovac later held off-year elections for the municipal assembly in 2006. Marušić's alliance once again won a plurality victory with sixteen seats, but the overall seat numbers favoured the opposition parties, led by the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS)–New Serbia (NS) alliance.Službeni Glasnik (Opštine Gornji Milanovac), Volume 15 Number 16 (6 October 2006), pp. 1-2. Although Marušić's mayoralty was not directly affected by the vote, he had a very fraught relationship with the assembly over the next two years.See for instance "Nezakonit izbor četiri direktora u Gornjem Milanovcu", Danas, 24 March 2007, accessed 24 January 2026; and "Raskol u SO Gornji Milanovac", Danas, 26 June 2007, accessed 24 January 2026; "Na dnevnom redu smena predsednika SO", Danas, 24 October 2007, accessed 24 January 2026.