[1] Relić ran for Sombor's first constituency seat in the 1990 Serbian parliamentary election as an independent candidate and was defeated by Josip Subotić of the Socialist Party of Serbia (Socijalistička partija Srbije, SPS).
)[5] The DS participated in the 1996 provincial election as part of the Zajedno coalition, and Relić was re-elected under its banner in Sombor's sixth division.
For the 2000 provincial election, the DS was a leading force in a multi-party coalition called the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (Demokratska opozicija Srbije, DOS).
The DOS won a landslide majority victory; Relić was again re-elected and this time served as a supporter of the administration.
Shortly before the end of his life, Relić was implicated in a scandal involving the disappearance of more than five million dinars from the Sombor municipal budget between 1999 and 2001.