| Vuk Draskovic |
Article Index for Vuk |
Information AboutVuk Draskovic |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT VUK DRAšKOVIć | |
| 1946 births | |
| draskovic, vuk | |
| living people | |
| politicians of vojvodina | |
| serbian novelists | |
| serbian politicians | |
| serbian writers | |
|
Vuk Drašković (Вук Драшковић) ( November 29 , 1946 ) is a Serbia n politician who is presently the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia And Montenegro . He was born in Međa (''Међа'') village, near Žitište in the Serbian province of Vojvodina and graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University Of Belgrade in 1968 . From 1969 to 1980 he worked as a journalist in the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug . He wrote five novels throughout the 1970s and 1980s: ''The Judge'', ''Knife'', ''Prayer'', ''Russian Consul'' and ''The Night of the General''. He was also a member of the Yugoslav Communist Party . EARLY LIFE AND CAREER Born in a small village in Banat region to a family of settlers from Herzegovina , Vuk was only 6 months old when his mother Stoja died. His father Vidak quickly remarried and eventually had two more sons and three daughters with his new bride, meaning that young Vuk grew up with 5 step-siblings. Shortly after Vuk's birth, the entire family went back to Herzegovina where he finished primary school in the village of Slivlje near Fojnica . After that Draskovic went to Gacko for secondary school studies. On his father's insistence Draskovic considered studying medicine in Sarajevo . However, the city was too "uptight and cramped" for his liking, so he went to study law in Belgrade instead. page 9 Between 1969 and 1978 , Draskovic dabbled in journalism. He first worked for the state newsagency ''Tanjug'' as its African correspondent, before taking a job as press advisor in the Yugoslav Workers Union Council. During the same period his novels ''The Judge'' and ''Knife'' were published, raising quite a controversy among Yugoslav ruling communist elites. Soon afterwards due to popular demand, ''Prayer'' and ''Russian Consul'' were published as well. Because of his controversial literary engagement Draskovic was considered somewhat of a dissident even though he was a member of the Yugoslav Communist Party since his 4th year of university studies. Still, many of his subsequent political supporters who were drawn to his royalist leanings never forgot and forgave his late 1970s piece in '' Politika Ekspres '' in which he labeled Chetniks as domestic traitors. page 9 CAREER IN POLITICS Late 1980s Together with Mirko Jovic and Vojislav Šešelj , Draskovic founded the Serbian National Renewal party (SNO) in 1989 . However, the trio soon found themselves at political crossroads and their party disintegrated in three pieces. Draskovic's relationship with Seselj is particularly interesting. Despite sharing Herzegovina roots as well as the godfather personal relation, the two quickly became bitter foes and fierce political opponents. Early 1990s In 1990 , Drašković founded the Serbian Renewal Movement (''Srpski Pokret Obnove'', SPO), a democratic nationalist party. They participated in the first post-communist democratic elections, held on December 9 , 1990 , but did not achieve particular success. Following that failure Drašković attempted to overthrow Serbian President Slobodan Milošević by street protests, organizing mass Demonstrations In Belgrade On March 9, 1991 . The police intervened, and clashed with demonstrators with some damage to public buildings resulting in the Yugoslav People's Army having to be brought in. Franjo Tudjman , then President of Croatia publicly stated after the March 9, 1991 riots that Vuk phoned his government to "seek help to topple current Serbian regime", which Milosevic and his party members used heavily to whip up public sentiment against Draskovic. Drašković's own political engagement at this early stage of his political career is full of inconsistencies and seemingly diametrically opposing views and actions. He fostered strong nationalist flare (attempting to rehabilitate Serbian Chetniks, legal Army of the Kingdom Of Yugoslavia during WW2) to complement his pro-Western tendencies. He insisted that Serbian government should promote radical democratic shift, renew traditional alliances with Western nations as a way to preserve some form of Yugoslav confederation rather than pursue direct confrontation with the Croats. On the other hand, he and his party SPO organized a paramilitary unit called the Serbian Guard led by known criminals such as Djordje Bozovic ''Giska'' and Branislav Matic ''Beli'' all of whom later fought in Croatia. And although Draskovic initially claimed this militia was an incitement to Serbian authorities to form a national armed force outside of Yugoslav People's Army (see last Quote), he eventually distanced himself from the paramilitary formation. page9 His rather emotional and poetic rhetoric often brought accusations of extremism and hardline nationalism. There's a contentious quote from his speech at SPO rally in region. Draskovic's anti-war views came to the fore in mid to late 1991, particularly in November of that year when he wrote a passionate accusation of the Serbian bloody assault on Vukovar for a Serbian daily '' Borba ''. But also in the same period he espoused many nationalist, even bordering on extremist, views through interviews, soundbites and op-ed pieces. See Quotations . In early 1992 he called on citizens of Bosnia to reject nationalism and was the first political figure in Serbia to openly point to crimes by Serb forces. Always in the thick of anti-Milošević struggle, Mr. Drašković and his wife Danica paid dearly for their activism. In 1993 they were arrested, savagely beaten and thrown into a high-security prison. Only his hunger strike, pressure from some opposition parties and the international community outrage forced the Serbian regime to set the Draškovićs free. Mid to late 1990s In 1996 SPO formed the opposition alliance ''Zajedno'' ("Together") with the Democratic Party of Zoran Đinđić and the Civic Alliance Of Serbia under Vesna Pešić , which achieved some success in the local elections of November same year. The coalition soon split up and Drašković's SPO participated on its own at the September 1997 parliamentary election boycotted by his former partners despite an array of local electronic media outlets in opposition hands. In January 1998 , the SPO was asked to join a coalition with Milošević's Socialist Party Of Serbia as tension with US and NATO increased in order to use his influence in the West. In early 1999 , Drašković became the deputy prime minister of the Federal Republic Of Yugoslavia . He did so in response to Milošević's appeal for national unity in the face of Albanian's fight for freedom in Kosovo. During the Kosovo War with NATO he split with Milošević on April 28 , 1999 and SPO returned to the opposition, yet he failed to denounce Serbian state crimes committed against Albanian majority in Kosovo. Unsuccessful attempts at Assassinating Drašković took place on October 3 , 1999 on Ibar Highway when four of his close associates were murdered as well as on June 15 , 2000 in Budva . As Of 2006 , Milorad Ulemek is on trial for this murder, together with the murder trial of Đinđić and Ivan Stambolić ; Milošević was also being prosecuted for it until his death. Post-Milošević Drašković has had lukewarm relations with just about every figure of note on the Serbian political scene, with frequently alternating periods of vicious feuding and open cooperation. In what he himself later termed "a bad political move", Drašković kept his SPO out of the wide anti-Milošević Democratic Opposition Of Serbia (DOS) coalition that formed in 2000, meaning that his candidate Vojislav Mihailović in the September 24, 2000 federal presidential elections achieved little success and that SPO also wasn't successful in the subsequent parliamentary election where the DOS won overwhelmingly. Because of this, Drašković and his party were pretty much marginalized over the next 3 years. In the fall of 2002, he attempted a comeback as one of the eleven candidates in the (subsequently unsuccessful due to low turnout) Serbian presidential elections. Despite a polished marketing campaign that saw Drašković change his personal appearance and tone down his fiery rhetoric, he ended up with only 4.5% of the total vote, well behind Vojislav Koštunica (31.2%) and Miroljub Labus (27.7%) both of whom moved on to the second round runoff. Next chance for redemption came in late 2003. Fully aware of SPO's, as well a his own, weak political standing after more than 3 years in political oblivion, Drašković entered his party into a pre-election coalition with New Serbia (NS) that saw him reunited with his old party colleague Velimir Ilić . Together in the 2003 Parliamentary Election they achieved limited success, but more importantly managed to get onto the coalition that formed the minority government (along with DSS , G17 Plus ) providing it with critical parliament seats to keep the far-right radicals ( SRS ) at bay. In the subsequent division of power, Drašković received a high-ranking position as Serbia And Montenegro 's foreign minister. He speaks English and Russian . PERSONAL It's safe to say that outside of Slobodan Milosevic and Mirjana Markovic , Vuk and Danica Draskovic are Serbia's most famous contemporary political couple. The two met way back in mid- New Year eve they ran into each other at a supermarket and Danica invited him to a party at the appartment where she lived with her brother. "''I forgot about my fiancee who waited for me to come back from grocery shopping and ended up playing chess the whole night with Danica's brother Veselin Boskovic''", Vuk would later admit. page 9 Vuk and Danica married on . QUOTATIONS
''(Source: http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/050824IT.htm)''
SEE ALSO |
|
|