Smiljko Kostić (Serbian Cyrillic: Смиљко Костић; born 22 February 1945) is a retired politician and administrator in Serbia.
[12] The DS briefly formed an assembly majority with the Democratic Party of Serbia (Demokratska stranka Srbije, DSS) and G17 Plus, but this fell apart in early 2005.
[13] Eventually, Kostić and New Serbia were able to form a working majority with the DSS, G17 Plus, the SPS, and the Serbian Renewal Movement (Srpski pokret obnove, SPO).
[14] In early 2005, Kostić organized a reception in support of Vladimir Lazarević, before the latter's departure for The Hague to face war crimes charges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
[18] In September 2005, Kostić announced that Russia's Gazprom was interested in financing a natural gas pipeline in southern Serbia and a new energy plant in Niš as part of a proposed deal between the two countries.
[20] Kostić survived a recall election initiated by the DS in December 2005, with about sixty per cent of eligible voters opposing his removal from office.
[23] New Serbia contested the 2007 Serbian parliamentary election in an alliance with the DSS, and Kostić was given the 125th position out of 250 on their combined electoral list.
)[26] In June 2007, Kostić and New Serbia lost the support of their coalition partners in the Niš city assembly, which approved measures to significantly reduce the powers of the mayor's office.
[14] It was generally accepted during this time that Niš's political divisions had led to a form of administrative paralysis, which caused the city to fall behind economically.
[28] Kostić visited and gave his support to two hunger strikers from the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka, SNS) in Niš in April 2011.