Mirko Bajić (Serbian Cyrillic: Мирко Бајић; born 13 June 1950) is a politician in Serbia from the country's Bunjevac community.
Bajić has been the leader of the Alliance of Bačka Bunjevci (Savez bačkih Bunjevaca, SBB) since the party's establishment in 2007 and has served for many years on the Bunjevac National Council.
No single party or alliance won a majority in the municipal assembly, and a new local administration was initially formed with members of the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (Savez vojvođanskih Mađara, SVM), the Socialist Party of Serbia (Socijalistička partija Srbije, SPS), and Bajić's group.
[10] He also represented the Subotica Civic Alliance in negotiations among Serbia's opposition parties for participation in upcoming elections.
[11] By the time of the 2000 Yugoslavian general election, Bajić was a member of the Democratic Party, which contested the election as part of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (Demokratska opozicija Srbije, DOS), a broad and ideologically diverse coalition of parties opposed to Slobodan Milošević's administration.
Kasza had become a deputy prime minister of Serbia in the DOS's administration in January 2001, and Bajić's stance caused friction with other members of his party.
[14] The DS ultimately revoked his membership in late 2002 and excluded him from the Subotica assembly (which they had the right to do under Serbia's election laws in effect at the time).
The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was reconstituted as the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, and the Chamber of Citizens ceased to exist.
[17] He was subsequently re-elected to the Subotica municipal assembly in a June 2003 by-election, winning in the Mali Bajmok division.
[19][20][21] Shortly after the 2004 elections, the NDS merged into the Democratic Party of Serbia (Demokratska stranka Srbije, DSS).
[23][24] The DS list won sixty-four mandates, and Bajić, who appeared in the twenty-seventh position, was not selected to serve in the national assembly.
In 2006, he strongly criticized Petar Kuntić of the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina for the latter's statement that Bunjevci would soon cease to be a distinct community.
[41] He made similar criticisms of Croatian president Zoran Milanović's 2021 statement that Bunjevci are Croats, describing the remark as a call for "violent assimilation," inappropriate for the leader of a serious European state.