)[7] Mayors were directly elected in the 2004 local elections, resulting in a divided administration in Novi Pazar: SDA leader Sulejman Ugljanin won the mayoral contest, but the rival Sandžak Democratic Party (SDP) was able to form a coalition government with smaller parties in the local assembly.
[14] Škrijlej also received the twenty-first position on the SDA-led Bosniak List for a European Sandžak in the 2008 Serbian parliamentary election, which was held concurrently with the local vote.
)[16][17] In January 2011, Škrijelj publicly called for the SDP to form a new government with the SDA in Novi Pazar, pointing to a recent alliance of the parties in Sjenica.
[18] Serbia's electoral system was reformed in 2011, such that all assembly mandates were awarded to candidates on successful lists in numerical order.
[22] The SDP's alliance narrowly won the 2012 city election in Novi Pazar but fell well short of a majority and ultimately formed a grand coalition with the SDA.
Škrijelj left office on 21 February 2013, remarking that any SDA officials not formally dismissed by the new city administration would resign out of party solidarity.
In June 2019, the BNV presented an address to the governments of Serbia and Montenegro calling for the Sandžak to receive special self-governing status.
Škrijelj accused Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić and his administration of seeking to undermine the Bosniak community's legitimate requests and described Džudžo as an enabler of this process.
Džudžo, for his part, rejected the calls for his resignation and described the special status initiative as the work of a pro-Albanian faction operating within the SDA.
[33] The BNV removed Džudžo as leader shortly thereafter and replaced him with Jasmina Curić,[34] although the special status initiative ultimately gained little traction.
[b][44] During an assembly debate in July 2024, Škrijelj said that it was an insult to Bosniaks for Serbian parliamentarians to reject the identification of the Srebrenica massacre as an act of genocide.