Several non-governmental organisations, political parties and prominent public figures in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina have requested public support for the reorganisation of Serbia as a federal state that would consist of the present Republic of Serbia and a Republic of Vojvodina, media in Vojvodina said on Monday.
The idea of autonomy has been used up, so a new historic agreement between Serbia and Vojvodina is needed to reconstruct the state, under which the country would be made up of two federal units, the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Vojvodina, proponents of the idea Zivan Berisavljevic and Djordje Subotic said at a press conference.
They announced a conference for April 1 when public support will be formally requested for a declaration of the democratic unification of Vojvodina and Serbia.
Berisavljevic, a senior official at the time of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, said that the document requested recognition of Vojvodina's political status, historical rights and the equality of all citizens living in it.
The initiative is backed, among others, by the Vojvodina Club, the Helsinki Committee on Human Rights, the Independent Association of Journalists of Vojvodina, the Vojvodina Party, the Alliance of Hungarians in Vojvodina, the Montenegrin Party, and the Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina. It, however, has angered right-wing extremists, who have burned a Vojvodina flag in Zrenjanin in protest.
