Zoran Đinđić (1 August 1952 – 12 March 2003) was a Serbian politician and philosopher who served as the prime minister of Serbia from 2001 until his assassination in 2003. He was the mayor of Belgrade in 1997, becoming the first non-communist and first democratically elected official to hold both key positions after World War II. Đinđić was a long-time opposition politician and held a doctorate in philosophy.
Đinđić was one of the original thirteen restorers of the modern day Democratic Party,Democratic Party official site: Reforming of Democratic Party becoming its president in 1994.Democratic Party official site: Dr Zoran Đinđić (1952-2003) During the 1990s, he was one of the co-leaders of the opposition to the administration of Slobodan Milošević, and became the Prime Minister of Serbia in 2001 after the overthrow of Milošević.
As Prime Minister, he advocated pro-democratic reforms and the integration of Serbia into European structures. His government ratified the European Convention on Human Rights and implemented innovations in line with the Council of Europe recommendations, which led to the introduction of institutions for the protection of human rights and freedoms, as well as for Serbia and Montenegro to become a member state of the Council of Europe in 2003. His government strongly advocated cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Following the arrest of Special Operations Unit (JSO) members and extradition to the ICTY, the JSO organized an armed mutiny in November 2001 in Belgrade. Đinđić was assassinated in 2003 by Zvezdan Jovanović, a former JSO member operative with ties to the Zemun Clan.
Early life and education Đinđić was born in Bosanski Šamac, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia where his father was stationed as an officer of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). His paternal side hailed from Toplica in southern Serbia. His mother Mila Dušanić (c. 1931-2 - 14 March 2016), a housewife, raised him and his elder sister Gordana; the family moved according to his father's jobs. Ten years of Zoran's childhood were spent in the town of Travnik, in central Bosnia. Eventually, the family moved to the capital, Belgrade, after his mother had gained a post there. Đinđić attended Ninth Belgrade Gymnasium, subsequently enrolling at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Philosophy, graduating in 1974. During his university days he developed an interest in politics.
After being convicted in 1974 by the communist authorities and through Party-controlled media for his role in his attempt to organize an independent political movement of Yugoslav students, Đinđić emigrated to West Germany thanks to the intervention of former German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who persuaded authorities to let Đinđić come to Germany instead of serving his sentence in Yugoslavia. Đinđić continued his studies in Germany and obtained a PhD in philosophy under the supervision of Jürgen Habermas from the University of Konstanz in 1979. As a student, he was greatly influenced by Habermas's advice that an intellectual had a duty not only to think, but to act. One fellow Yugoslav student who knew him in Germany, Milorad Vučelić, recalled that Đinđić was known on campus "not only for his brilliance as a student, but that he was open to life. He wasn't a typical boring intellectual. He knew how to live. He had great-looking girlfriends. He was extremely cool." While a student at the University of Konstanz, he maintained close ties to student anarchist groups and participated in the Praxis-run Korčula Summer School. He became proficient in German. Later, three months before serving as Serbian prime minister, he also mastered English.
Political career
In 1979, Đinđić returned to Yugoslavia to take a teaching post at the University of Novi Sad. In the 1980s, he was a writer for the Literary Review, an influential Belgrade journal. He also held a post-doctoral fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
In an essay in the June 1988 edition of the Literary Review, Đinđić called for preserving the status quo established in 1974 with the Kosovo region to remain an autonomous province within the Socialist Republic of Serbia, declaring that if Kosovo were to lose its autonomy: "we will be able to declare with considerable certainty that in every future Serbian state Kosovo will be a permanent source of repression." Đinđić's stance on the Kosovo question marked him as an opponent of Slobodan Milošević who starting in 1987 had campaigned to end Kosovo's autonomy. One intellectual, Drinka Gojković recalled in 1996: "You can't imagine how wonderful it was then to read his writing. While everyone was screaming, using shocking language to fan hatred, Zoran was writing these beautiful essays, arguing that nationalism was not the way". On 28 June 1989, Milošević ended the autonomy of Kosovo, which caused much alarm in the other Yugoslav republics where it was feared that Milošević might do something similar.
On 11 December 1989 together with other Serb intellectuals and pro-democracy activists he founded the liberal Democratic Party (DS) based on the similarly conceptualized Democratic Party that existed in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He became the party's Executive Board Chairman in 1990, and got elected to the Parliament of Serbia the same year. In the early 1990s, Đinđić shifted over to a more nationalist position that was broadly supportive of Milošević's policies, much to the chagrin of his former admirers. In 1993, he played a leading role in writing the platform of the DS, calling for a referendum on the restoration of the monarchy. Đinđić made it clear that he personally favored restoring the House of Karađorđević. The same platform called for the Kosovo region to remain part of Serbia proper and for the government to take anti-natalist policies designed to limit the birthrate of the Kosovo Albanians. In January 1994 he replaced Dragoljub Mićunović as President of the Democratic Party.
The new balance of power within DS led to an early party conference. At the party conference on 5 January 1994 in Belgrade, Đinđić became president, pushing out personal political mentor Mićunović who was forced into resigning as the local party branches turned against him. The (in)famous quip uttered at the conference by 41-year-old Đinđić about 63-year-old Mićunović was: "Mićunović's time has passed.... He's no Tina Turner who sings better now than when she was thirty". In his embittered speech at the conference during which he resigned his post, Mićunović characterized the manner of Đinđić's takeover of DS as the "combination of Machiavellianism and revolutionary technique". In this internal party showdown with Mićunović, Đinđić also benefited from some discreet support in the Milošević-controlled state-run media. Though many DS members didn't like the way this transfer of power was executed, symbolically referring to it as "oceubistvo" (patricide), Đinđić managed to quickly move DS away from what he occasionally referred to in derisive terms as the "debate club" towards a modern and efficient organizational structure that functioned according to a business management model. In February 1994, Đinđić visited Pale to meet with Radovan Karadžić, saying that he had gone to Bosnia to "express solidarity with the people of the Bosnian Serb republic."
The following year, on 15 April 1995, regular party conference was held and Đinđić got re-elected as party president. Though a much better organized party under Đinđić, DS still experienced trouble formulating a clear stance on the national question. Đinđić's own actions perhaps made a good illustration of this seemingly confused standing on both sides of the issue. Đinđić basically refused to acknowledge the national question as a real issue, making not a single mention of the Serbs living in other parts of the former Yugoslavia in his book Yugoslavia as an Unfinished State. At the same time he maintained close links with Bosnian Serb politician and the President of Republika Srpska Radovan Karadžić, visiting him at Pale in February 1994 while American forces threatened to bombard Bosnian Serb positions. This seeming flip-flopping on the national issue was effectively used by DS' political opponents and Đinđić's critics across the political spectrum.
As the Bosnian War ended with the signing of the Dayton Agreement in November 1995, in addition to his grip on power domestically, Milošević enjoyed stable support from the international community that recognized him as the "peace and stability factor in the Balkans". The next chance to dent his armour came at the November 1996 municipal elections, which the DS entered as part of an opposition coalition called Zajedno featuring SPO, DSS, and GSS. Democratic Party (at the time with a total of only 7,000 members across Serbia) joined Zajedno against Đinđić's personal wishes as he got outvoted on three separate occasions when the decision was discussed internally.NIN 2010, p.18 Following opposition victories in key Serbian cities such as Belgrade, Niš and Novi Sad, Milošević refused to recognize the results, sparking three months of protest marches by hundreds of thousands of citizens. After a massive series of public protests over election fraud perpetrated by the central government under Slobodan Milošević during the winter 1996–1997, Đinđić became Mayor of Belgrade, the first post-communist mayor to hold that post after the Second World War. Under pressure, Milošević acknowledged the results and on 21 February 1997 Đinđić got inaugurated as the mayor.
Later that year Đinđić made a bold decision to boycott the parliamentary elections on 21 December 1997, thus breaking up the Zajedno coalition. United only by their political enemy, the coalition "Zajedno" (Together) with Vuk Drašković's SPO and Vesna Pešić's GSS collapsed only four months after their victory. Đinđić was voted out of his position as Belgrade mayor by the SPO, SPS and SRS.
Đinđić and his party boycotted the 1997 Serbian presidential and parliamentary elections, as did others in the "democratic bloc" including Vojislav Koštunica's Democratic Party of Serbia. This caused the Socialists and Radicals to sweep most of the seats, leaving the third largest portion to Vuk Drašković's SPO. The boycott helped forced a second set of elections when the second round was ruled to have had insufficient turnout. Serbian law at the time mandated at least 50% turnout for a president to be elected.
In this case, Vojislav Šešelj won the second round against the Socialists' Zoran Lilić; when the election was re-done, Šešelj lost to the Socialists' Milan Milutinović. This caused Šešelj to allege electoral fraud and lead protests against the government. He changed his mind however, when the Kosovo crisis began in early 1998, and his Radicals joined the government as a coalition partner. When Vuk Drašković joined the Yugoslav government in early 1999, this left Đinđić as Serbia's main opposition leader as NATO's war began against Yugoslavia.
After former secret policeman, anti-Milošević publisher and journalist Slavko Ćuruvija was murdered on Orthodox Easter during NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Đinđić sought safety and fled to temporary exile in Montenegro, allegedly because he was next on the assassination list of then-President Slobodan Milošević's secret service.
In September 1999, Đinđić was named by Time magazine as one of the most important politicians at the beginning of the 21st century. Upon his return to the country in July 1999, Đinđić was charged with draft dodging; charges were subsequently dropped by military prosecutors the following month.