, in 1990, removing picture of
Josip Broz Tito from Belgrade Center of engineers and electricians. In March 1989, Drašković along with
Mirko Jović and
Vojislav Šešelj founded the Sava Association. The group dedicated itself to the protection of the Serbian language and the defense of
Kosovo and Metohija. In the late 1980s, Drašković was in agreement with Šešelj's sentiments about deporting Albanians from Kosovo and suggested that "a special fund" was needed "to finance the
repopulation of Kosovo by Serbs". However, Jović, Šešelj and Drašković disagreed with each other and their party split into three. The Sava Association became the
Serbian National Renewal Party under the leadership of Jović in January 1990. On 26 September 1990, Drašković declared that his armed "volunteers" would be willing to defend
Krajina Serbs, and three days later in an interview with
Delo, Drašković stated: "Serbia must obtain all territories in what is today
Herzegovina,
Bosnia,
Slavonia,
Dalmatia, in these parts of Croatia where the Serbs made a majority of the population until 6 April 1941, when the Ustasha genocide against them began...Wherever the Serb blood was shed by the Ustashas knives, wherever there are our graves there are our borders". He also claimed that most Bosnian Muslims are
"burdened with Serbian origin" and that
"they run away from themselves because they know that they are Orthodox and Serbs". The Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) participated in the first post-communist democratic elections, held on 9 December 1990, but finished a distant second amidst the total blackout from the pro-Milošević state media. Following that failure Drašković kept pressure on Serbian President
Slobodan Milošević via street protests, organizing mass
demonstrations in Belgrade on 9 March 1991. The police intervened, and clashed with demonstrators with some damage to public buildings resulting in the
Yugoslav People's Army being brought in. Clashes between police and protesters resulted in the deaths of a student and an officer, and injuries to over 200 people. Demonstrations ended after the government agreed to concessions. Drašković became a leading opponent of Milošević. His fiery and emotional speeches earned him the moniker "Czar of the Streets". While Drašković was a nationalist, he also held pro-Western and anti-war views. His anti-war views came to the fore in mid to late 1991, particularly in November of that year when he wrote a passionate condemnation of the bloody siege of
Vukovar in the Serbian daily
Borba. In early 1992, he called on all citizens of Bosnia to reject nationalism. In 1993, he and his wife
Danica Drašković were arrested, beaten and sent to a high-security prison following street riots in Belgrade. In 1996, SPO formed an opposition alliance
Zajedno ("
Together") with the
Democratic Party of
Zoran Đinđić and the
Civic Alliance of Serbia under
Vesna Pešić, which achieved major successes in the local elections in November of that year, but later split. He was sacked by the Prime Minister
Momir Bulatović on 28 April 1999. There were two attempts to assassinate Drašković: on 3 October 1999 on the
Ibar highway when four of his close associates were murdered, and on 15 June 2000 in
Budva. In 2005,
Milorad Ulemek was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder of Đinđić and
Ivan Stambolić and for the assassination attempt on Drašković in 2000.
Post-Milošević In what he himself later termed "a bad political move", Drašković kept his SPO out of the wide anti-Milošević
Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition that formed in 2000; his candidate in the 24 September 2000 federal presidential elections, Vojislav Mihailović, achieved little success, and the SPO was unsuccessful in the subsequent parliamentary election which the
DOS won overwhelmingly. Because of this, Drašković and his party were marginalized over the next three years. In the fall of 2002, he attempted a comeback as one of eleven candidates in a Serbian presidential election; this election was later declared invalid due to low voter turnout. Despite a polished marketing campaign that saw Drašković change his personal appearance and tone down his fiery rhetoric, he ended up with only 4.5% of the total vote, well behind
Vojislav Koštunica (31.2%) and
Miroljub Labus (27.7%), both of whom moved on to the second-round runoff. His next chance for political redemption came in late 2003. Fully aware of SPO's weak political standing (as well as his own) after more than 3 years in political oblivion, Drašković entered his party into a pre-election coalition with
New Serbia (NS), thus reuniting with old party colleague
Velimir Ilić. Joining forces for the
2003 parliamentary election, they achieved limited success, but did manage to get into the coalition that formed the minority government (along with
DSS,
G17 Plus), providing it with critical parliamentary seats to keep the far-right radicals (
SRS) at bay. In the subsequent division of power, Drašković became foreign minister, a position he held until May 2007. In August 2010, Drašković argued in favour of changing the
Serbian Constitution of 2006 to remove references to
Kosovo as a part of
Serbia because according to him "Serbia has no national sovereignty over Kosovo whatsoever. All of Serbia knows that Kosovo is not really a province within Serbia, that it is completely beyond the control of the government and the state of Serbia". ==Personal life==