Bogoljub Pejčić (; born 6 January 1936) is a Serbian retired journalist, author, and politician. He has served four terms in the Serbian parliament and was a minister in the transitional government established after the fall of Slobodan Milošević in 2000. A prominent figure in the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) for many years, he later joined the breakaway Serbian Democratic Renewal Movement (SDPO).
Early life and career Pejčić was born in Skoplje (now Skopje), in what was then the Vardar Banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.Dušan Bogdanović and Biljana Kovačević Vučo, Institutions Abused: Who Was Who in Serbia, 1987–2000, (Belgrade: Biljana Kovačević Vučo Fund), 2011, p. 214. He holds a degree in political science.Детаљи о народном посланику: ПЕЈЧИЋ, БОГОЉУБ, , National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, accessed 26 July 2026. He wrote several articles for Borba in the early 1970s, and in 1975 he published a work entitled Iskušenje slobodnog vremena (English: The Temptations of Free Time).See for instance Borba, 7 January 1972, p. 4–5.Borba, 16 August 1975, p. 8.
In 1985, Pejčić wrote an article accusing Rexhep Qosja of falsifying the history of Kosovo and of ignoring historical persecutions of Kosovo Serbs by Kosovo Albanians.Književne novine, 15 May 1985, p. 5. Pejčić subsequently researched historical Serb settlements in Albania, with a particular focus on the evidence provided by Serbian churches of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.Borba, 22 March 1989, p. 8. In May 1989, he accused the People's Socialist Republic of Albania of attempting "to destroy every trace of Serbian existence, duration, culture, and history on its own soil (just like on the soil of the future, imagined 'Greater Albania'.)"Borba, 7 May 1989, p. 17.
Politician Pejčić joined Vojislav Šešelj's Serbian Freedom Movement (SSP) in early 1990, prior to Šešelj's turn toward far-right politics. The SSP merged into Vuk Drašković's Serbian Renewal Movement on 14 March 1990, although profound differences soon developed between Drašković and Šešelj over the SPO's direction. Pejčić was a prominent supporter of Drašković and an opponent of Šešelj in this period, describing the latter as a "putschist" and leading a motion to expel him from the party.Robert Thomas, Serbia Under Miloševic: Politics in the 1990s, (London: Hurst & Company), 1999, pp. 54–55.Arhiv UNS — Listovi stranaka, 1 July 1990, pp. 51, 65.
Pejčić was the SPO's candidate for Zemun's second constituency seat in the 1990 Serbian parliamentary election. He was defeated in the second round of voting by Duško Matković of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS).Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 9. и 23. децембра 1990. године (Извештај о укупним резултатима избора за народне посланике у Народну скупштину Републике Србије 9. и 23. децембра 1990. године), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 28 July 2025.Magyar Szó, 13 December 1990, p. 4. Over the next decade, Serbian political life was dominated by the authoritarian rule of SPS president Slobodan Milošević and his allies.
By 1991, Pejčić was a SPO vice-president and the editor-in-chief of Srpska reč (which was strongly associated with the SPO, although Pejčić rejected the notion that it was the party's official journal).Borba, 29 March 1991, p. 9.Borba, 22 April 1991, p. 29.Politika, 15 September 1994, p. 13. While the SPO originally promoted an ideology of Serbian nationalism, it later became associated with opposition to the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s. In June 1991, Pejčić said on Slovenian television, "in this crazy time and crazy war, on behalf of the SPO, I express my condolences to all Serbian, Slovenian, Croatian and all other mothers who have lost their sons."Borba, 1 July 1991, p. 28. In December of the same year, with regard to the ongoing war in Croatia, he said, "We could not approve this war. [...] This war is in the service of preserving [Milošević's] government and nothing more."Borba, 4 December 1991, p. 8.
In February 1992, Pejčić and fellow SPO vice-president Jovan Marjanović travelled to Australia, where they and members of the SPO's Australian international committee met with speaker of the House of Representatives Leo McLeay. Pejčić and Marjanović talked about the current situation in the former Yugoslavia, with a particular focus on the status of the Serb community in the Krajina. McLeay expressed his wish for the conflict to be resolved peacefully.Borba, 18 February 1992, p. 4.
The SPO joined with other opposition parties to create the Democratic Movement of Serbia (DEPOS) opposition coalition in May 1992. At a DEPOS rally in Užice in August of that year, Pejčić said, "No party alone can defeat the communists in power in the upcoming elections, but together we can, and this year, God willing, we will defeat the communists."Borba, 4 August 1992, p. 8. (By "the communists," he meant the governing Socialist Party.) Later in the year, he criticized Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova for boycotting the elections, saying that Rugova actually wanted Milošević to remain in power. Pejčić also said that if Milošević were defeated, the outside world would no longer accept Rugova's claims about Kosovo Albanians being endangered and Kosovo being Albanian land.Politika, 22 November 1992, p. 6.
Parliamentarian First term (1993–94) Prior to the 1992 Serbian parliamentary election, Serbia adopted a system of proportional representation in which one-third of parliamentary mandates were assigned to candidates on successful electoral lists in numerical order and the remaining two-thirds to other candidates at the discretion of the sponsoring parties and coalitions.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. Pejčić appeared in the sixth position on the DEPOS list for the Belgrade division. The list won fifteen seats; while not automatically elected, he was assigned an "optional" mandate and took his seat when the assembly convened in January 1993.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 20. и 27. децембра 1992. године и 3. јануара 1993. године – ЗБИРНЕ ИЗБОРНЕ ЛИСТЕ (1 Београд), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024.Избори за народне посланике Народне скупштине одржани 20. и 27. децембра 1992. године и 3. јануара 1993. године – РЕЗУЛТАТИ ИЗБОРА (Извештај о укупним резултатима избора за народне посланике у Народну скупштину Републике Србије, одржаних 20. и 27. децембра 1992. године и 3. јануара 1993. године), , Republic Election Commission, Republic of Serbia, accessed 7 February 2024.Službeni Glasnik (Republike Srbije), Volume 49 Number 7 (25 January 1993), pp. 193-194. The Socialist Party won an overall plurality victory with 101 out of 250 seats and initially governed with informal support from Vojislav Šešelj's far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS). DEPOS, with fifty seats, served in opposition. Pejčić was a member of the parliamentary defence and security committee.Službeni Glasnik (Republike Srbije), Volume 49 Number 9 (28 January 1993), p. 251.
Pejčić boycotted the assembly when Slobodan Milošević took the oath of office as Serbian president following his re-election in the 1992 Serbian presidential election. In a letter to Zoran Lilić, the president of the national assembly, Pejčić wrote, "Too many people have knelt demanding the resignation of Mr. Slobodan Milošević for me to be able to stand as a member of parliament when he takes the oath. In addition, Mr. Milošević is taking the oath for the fourth time, and after each one, it is getting harder and harder for the Serbian people. For these reasons, and not out of disrespect for the will of the majority of citizens and the personality of the president, I inform you that I will not be present at the part of the session when Mr. Slobodan Milošević takes the oath."Borba, 26 January 1993, p. 2.
In late January 1993, Pejčić urged the Serbian parliament to hold an emergency debate on Operation Maslenica, in which Croatia sought to take territory held by forces of the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK). He said that if Croatia did not comply with the terms of the United Nations Security Council (which condemned the operation), Serbia should issue an ultimatum for Croatian forces to withdraw in three days; if Croatia failed to comply, Serbia should then use military force to defend the area's Serb population in accordance with Serbia's constitution. He added that he was against the use of any paramilitary forces in the conflict but would favour mobilization of the Serbian army.Borba, 29 January 1993, p. 7. Ultimately, the Croatian military action ended after ten days due to a counteroffensive from the Serbian Krajina military.
Pejčić was defeated in his bid for re-election as a SPO vice-president in March 1993.Borba, 9 March 1993, p. 7.
SPO leader Vuk Drašković and his wife Danica were arrested, beaten, and sent to a high-security prison in June 1993 following opposition street protests in Belgrade. A number of SPO parliamentarians, including Pejčić, later went on a hunger strike calling for their release.Borba, 5 July 1993, p. 2. The couple were ultimately released from prison following an international campaign.
In August 1993, Pejčić wrote an editorial piece in Srpska reč that was strongly critical of both Šešelj and Ratko Mladić in the context of the Bosnian War. He wrote, "If [NATO] missiles start falling on the mountains around Sarajevo, this will not mean, as General Mladić and the warlord Šešelj explain it, that the West wants to start a new war to the advantage of the Muslims. It will be in response to the heartless and arrogant behaviour of Serbian leaders quarrelling with the whole world, who in their irrational blindness cannot see the enormous suffering of, primarily, their own Serbian people."Bogoljub Pejčić, "The Temple of Lunatics," Srpska reč, 16–30 August 1993, p. 5.
The Socialist–Radical alliance broke down later in 1993, and in September of that year the Radicals brought a motion of non-confidence against the government. The SPO initially refused to support the motion; Pejčić justified this decision on the grounds that, if successful, the motion would lead to an even worse administration, in which the Milošević regime would likely appoint a Radical prime minister to cover up its own past performance in government.Borba, 21 September 1993, p. 13. Subsequently, however, Pejčić announced that the SPO would vote to bring down the government if Zoran Sokolović did not resign as minister of internal affairs, citing Sokolović's responsibility for presiding over a breakdown of law and order and a concurrent rise of organized crime.Borba, 15 October 1993, p. 1. Faced with the real possibility of defeat, Milošević dissolved parliament and called a new parliamentary election for December 1993.
Second term (1994–97)