Stjepan Mesić
Stjepan " Stipe " Mesic (born 24 December 1934 in Orahovica, Kingdom of Yugoslavia) is a Croatian politician. From 18 February 2000 to February 18, 2010 he was President of Croatia. He was also from 1 July 1991 to October 3, 1991 past president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ( SFRY).
Life
During World War II mesics family took active part in the struggle of the partisans against the fascist occupation forces in part, with eleven family members were killed. Mesic graduated in 1961 at the University of Zagreb as a lawyer and was from 1966 a member of parliament of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, one of the Yugoslav republics. In 1971, he was arrested during the Croatian Spring for "counter- revolutionary activities ", together with other representatives of the Croatian communists, convicted, and spent a year in political detention in prison of Stara Gradiška. Thereafter, the trained lawyer worked as a lawyer for state enterprises.
In June 1989, he co-founded the US-led Franjo Tuđman Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ ), which Croatia won an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections in 1990.
From 30 May to 24 August 1990, he was appointed by the Tuđman Croatian prime minister. He was elected Croatian representatives in the Yugoslav Federal Presidency, where he served as past president first as vice president and from 1991.
In 1991, as the end of Yugoslavia was foreseeable, he said in his inaugural speech to his presidency of the SFRY: "I will be the last president of Yugoslavia. After the end of my reign there will be no more of this country in this form. "
In May 1994, he resigned after internal party disagreements, claims to be made because of the Croatian Bosnia policy, from the HDZ and, together with Josip Manolić the Party of Croatian Independent Democrats ( HND). The Parliament's Bureau, a position he held since 1991, he lost in a row. In 1997 he resigned from the HND and went to the Croatian People's Party.
1997 and 1998, said Mesic before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague as a witness in the trial of Croatian General Tihomir Blaskic from. It is believed that this was an act of political settlement with Franjo Tuđman, with which he had used at the beginning of the 1990s at the forefront of the movement for the independence of Croatia.
On 18 February 2000 Mesic was the successor to the recently deceased Franjo Tuđman, having won the runoff election against Dražen Budiša elected president of Croatia.
Mesics political orientation is left- liberal to social democratic. He advocates the systematic democratization and Euro -Atlantic integration of his country, the social compensation and an approximation of his country to the EU.
In the presidential election on January 2, 2005 Mesic ran again. He won the first ballot, 48.9 percent of the vote and was well ahead of the HDZ candidate Jadranka Kosor, who received about 20.3 percent of the vote. In the second ballot on 16 January 2005, he prevailed with 65.9 percent of the vote, with a turnout of 51.0 percent.
Criticism
Mesic during his political career very different statements about the Ustasha and the area controlled by their Independent State of Croatia ( NDH ), which existed from 1941 to 1945 made . While the policy of the NDH still defended the early 1990s, he confessed later to democracy and freedom and apologized in a 2001 speech to the Knesset for the crimes of the NDH state against the Jews.
In December 2006, the Croatian national television HRT radiated from the video recording of a speech which Mesic was held in 1992 to representatives of the Croatian diaspora in Australia, where he in 1941 glorified the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia and denied the importance of remembering the Jasenovac concentration camp. As a result, the three reporters who were responsible for the broadcast of the live recording, were temporarily suspended from duty - officially because of " unprofessional " work. The suspension was withdrawn only after violent protests by Croatian human rights organizations and journalists ' associations.