City politics

Slobodan Milošević was defeated by DSS leader Vojislav Koštunica in the 2000 Yugoslavian president election, a watershed event that brought about large-scale changes in the politics of Yugoslavia and Serbia. Koštunica was a candidate of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), a broad and ideologically diverse coalition of parties opposed to Milošević's rule; the DS was one of its constituent members. Joksimović was re-elected to the Belgrade city assembly in the concurrent 2000 Serbian local elections, winning in Stari Grad's fifth division.

Parliamentarian

In the aftermath of Milošević's defeat, a new Serbian parliamentary election was called for December 2000. Joksimović appeared in the ninetieth position on the DOS's electoral list; the coalition won a landslide majority with 178 out of 250 seats, and Joksimović was awarded a mandate when the assembly met in January 2001.^[8] (From 2000 to 2011, Serbian parliamentary mandates were awarded to sponsoring parties or coalitions rather than to individual candidates, and it was common practice for the mandates to be distributed out of numerical order. Joksimović did not automatically receive a mandate by virtue of her list position, but she was nonetheless chosen as a Democratic Party representative within the coalition.)^[9] She and several other delegates resigned from the assembly on 12 June 2002, but their resignations were subsequently annulled and their mandates restored on technical grounds.^[10][11]

The DS fielded its own list in the 2003 Serbian parliamentary election, and Joksimović appeared in the twenty-fourth position.^[12] The list won thirty-seven seats. She was not, on this occasion, given a mandate, and her term in office ended when the new parliament was constituted in early 2004.

Government official

In 2001, Joksimović was appointed as an assistant minister in the Yugoslavian ministry of foreign affairs, leading the directorate-general of information, press, and culture. She served in this role until 2004.^[13]

She argued against the possible breakup of Yugoslavia into its constituent republics of Serbia and Montenegro in January 2001, arguing that this would jeopardize investments.^[14] In May of the same year, she announced that Yugoslavia would need to eliminate eleven of its embassies as a cost-cutting measure.^[15]

In 2002, United Nations official Carla Del Ponte charged that Yugoslavian officials were allowing accused war criminal Ratko Mladić to remain at liberty. Joksimović rejected this charge, saying that officials were not aware of Mladić's whereabouts.^[16] She welcomed the start of the Srebrenica war crimes trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) the following year, saying that Serbian citizens had been poorly informed about the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and that the trial would help Serbians come to terms with the events of the Bosnian War.^[17]

Joksimović represented Serbia and Montenegro (as Yugoslavia had been renamed by this time) at the thirteenth summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Kuala Lumpur in February 2003.^[18] In October of the same year – acting as a representative of the DS rather than in a government capacity – she travelled to Sao Paulo to officially bring the DS into the Socialist International.^[19]