Stjepan Mesic

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**Stjepan Mesić**
Missing image Stipe_mesic.jpg Stipe Mesić
Order:	2nd President
In office since:	February 18, 2000
Predecessor:	Franjo Tuđman
Date of birth:	December 24, 1934
Place of birth:	Orahovica, Croatia
Spouse:	Milka Mesić
Profession:	Lawyer
Political party:	Croatian People's Party

Stjepan Mesić (born December 24, 1934) has been the President of the Republic of Croatia since 2000.

Mesić was a deputy in the Croatian Parliament in 1960s, and then absent from politics until 1990 when he became a member of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and later the Prime Minister of Croatia. He was elected Croatian member of the Yugoslav Federal Presidency where he served first as Vice President and then in 1991 as the last President of the Yugoslav Federal Presidency. After that from 1992 he served as the President of the Croatian Parliament.

In 1994, he left HDZ with his several colleagues to form a new party - Croatian Independent Democrats (HND). In 1997 the majority of HND members, including Mesić, merged into the Croatian People's Party (HNS).

After Franjo Tuđman died in December 1999, he was elected in two rounds the President of the Republic of Croatia in February 2000. He was re-elected in January 2005 for a second term.

Contents

1 Early years

2 Mesić in the 1990s

3 Presidency of Croatia

4 External links

Early years

Stjepan Mesić, commonly shortened to Stipe Mesić, was born in Orahovica, Slavonia. He graduated from the gymnasium in Požega and from the Law Faculty of the University of Zagreb.

After becoming a lawyer, he worked in Orahovica and Našice. He finished compulsory military service and then became a municipal judge after passing judicial exams.

Mesić got married to Milka (nee Dudunić) and they had two daughters.

He moved to Zagreb to work as a manager in the company "Univerzal". The managerial position (he was Director of General Affairs) implied that he was aligned with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

In 1966, he ran as an independent candidate in the election for his municipal council, and defeated two other candidates, one from the Communist Party and the other from the Socialist Union of Working People. In 1967, he became the mayor of Orahovica and a member of the Croatian Parliament.

As mayor, Mesić initiated the building of a private factory in the town, the first private factory in Yugoslavia. However, this was stopped by Tito as an attempt to silently introduce capitalism, which was illegal according to the then-current constitution.

In 1967, when a group of Croatian intellectuals published the now-famous "Declaration" about the Croatian language, Mesić publically denounced it as a diversionary attack against the very foundations of Yugoslavia and called for its authors to be prosecuted by law. However, in the 1970s, Mesić proceeded to support the Croatian Spring movement which called for Croatian equality within the Yugoslav Federation on economic, political and cultural level. The government indicted him for "acts of enemy propaganda". The initial process lasted 3 days in which 55 witnesses testified, only five against him, but he was sentenced to one year and two months in jail. He appealed and the trials prolongued, but eventually in 1975 he was incarcerated for one year, and served his sentence at the Stara Gradiška prison.

Mesić in the 1990s

He was elected again in 1990 as a candidate of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in the first multi-party elections in Croatia after World War II. He became the general secretary of HDZ and later the Prime Minister of Croatia and served from May until August 1990. He then resigned to eventually be elected to the Yugoslav Federal Presidency where he served first as Vice-President.

Presidents rotated annually according to republic-province key automatically. When Mesić's turn came to automatically become the President, the Serbian Presidency Member Borisav Jović demanded voting in the Presidency. Four members (Serbia, Montenegro, Vojvodina, Kosovo) were against him and four members (Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia) were in favor. That was considered as unconstitutional since every year Presidents rotated. Then, European Community mediators convinced Jović to admit Mesić as the President.

When Croatia declared its complete independence, he returned to Croatia and resigned from the Presidency since it was evident that SFR Yugoslavia did not exist anymore as far as the Croatians were concerned. In 1992, he was elected to Parliament and became the President of the Parliament.

In 1994, Mesić left the HDZ to form a new party, the Croatian Independent Democrats (Hrvatski Nezavisni Demokrati, HND). He opposed the government policy toward Bosnia and Herzegovina, accusing Franjo Tuđman of agreeing to carve Bosnia and Herzegovina with Slobodan Milošević. He also criticized privatization during war and unresolved privatization criminality as war profiteering.

In 1997, he and the majority of his party merged into the Croatian People's Party (HNS), where Mesić became an executive vice-president.

Presidency of Croatia

He was elected President of the Republic of Croatia in the 2000 election after winning the first round and defeating Dražen Budiša of HSLS in the second round. Mesić ran as the joint candidate of the HNS, HSS, LS and IDS. After becoming president, he stepped down from membership in the HNS.

He heavily criticized former President Franjo Tuđman's policies as nationalistic and authoritarian, lacking a free media and employing bad economics, while Mesić favored a more liberal approach to opening the Croatian economy to foreign investment.

As President, in September 2000 he retired seven Croatian active generals who had written two open letters to the public arguing that the current Government administration "is campaigning to criminalize Homeland War and that the Government is accusing and neglecting the Croatian Army". Mesić held that active duty officers could not write public political letters without approval of their Commander-in-Chief. Opposition parties condemned the President's decision as being a dangerous decision that could harm Croatian national security. Mesić later retired four more generals for similar reasons.

President Mesić is active in foreign policy, promoting Croatia's ambition to become a member of the European Union and NATO. He also initiated mutual apologies for possible war crimes with the President of Serbia and Montenegro. After Constitutional amendments in September 2000, he was deprived of most of his roles in domestic policy-making, which instead passed wholly to the Croatian Government and its Premier.

Mesić made a testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia that implicated Croatian army in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The right-wing parts of the Croatian public took issue with this, saying that his testimony contained untrue statements and questioned his motives (he was often branded "traitor").

He was against the USA's military campaign against Iraq and Saddam Hussein's regime without United Nations approval and mandate. He improved Croatian foreign relations with Libya by exchanging visits with the Libyan leader Moammar Ghadafi, contrary to the wishes of British and EU diplomacy.

The first Mesić mandate was not marked with historically crucial events such as the Tuđman presidency, and the Croatian public shifted in political orientation (HDZ partly lost in popularity, mostly to leftist parties).

When the Government changed hands in late 2003, problems were expected between the leftist President and a Government with rightist members, but Mesić handled the situation gracefully and there were few notable problems in this regard.

He served his first 5-year term until February 2005. In the 2005 election, Mesić was a candidate supported by eight political parties and won almost one half of votes, but was denied the absolute majority by a few percent. Mesić faced off with Jadranka Kosor in the second round of the elections and won. He will serve his second 5-year term until 2010.