Dražen Budiša

Dražen Budiša ( born July 25, 1948 in Drniš ) is a Croatian politician and writer. He was in the mid-1990s leading members of the opposition against Franjo Tuđman and several times minister in Croatia.

Budiša studied in Zagreb philosophy and sociology.

Budiša was a student leader (Chairman of the Zagreb Student Association ) of the Croatian Spring in the 1970s imprisoned as Erstangeklagter for four years. Until the democratic uprising in 1989 he was defeated after an operating ban in public and worked as a librarian.

During the war he was Croatia from August 1991 to February 1992 Minister, but was the first to the government to stand in the presidential elections in 1992, but he lost to Franjo Tuđman. He led the party HSLS, was three times as chairman from 1990 to 1996, from 1997 to 2001 and 2002 to 2004 than this second most important party of the victorious opposition electoral alliance for the 2000 general election. Two weeks later, on 7 February 2000, he was subject to the results 44 % to 56% of the runoff election for president Stjepan Mesic. He entered the government as a minister and was also briefly Deputy Prime Minister in 2002.

The permissive attitude to his view of his coalition partner SDP in foreign policy (delivered Croatian generals to the ICTY in The Hague, concessions to Slovenia because of the Krško nuclear power plant and because of border issues ) came to a head in a government crisis. Then HSLS left the government coalition. After poor results in subsequent elections Budiša resigned as chairman of the HSLS.

Since then, he no longer participates in active politics.