Dragoljub Mićunović

Dragoljub Mićunović MP
President of the Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro
In office November 3, 2000 – March 4, 2004
Preceded by	Milomir Minić
Succeeded by	Milorad Drljevic
Personal details
Born	(1930-06-14) 14 June 1930 Merdare, Vardar Banovina, Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Nationality	Serbian
Political party	Democratic Party
Alma mater	University of Belgrade
Profession	Philosopher, Politician

Dragoljub Mićunović (Serbian Cyrillic: Драгољуб Мићуновић Serbo-Croatian pronunciation: [ˈdrǎɡɔʎub miˈt͜ɕǔːnɔʋit͜ɕ]; born 14 June 1930) is a Serbian politician, philosopher, and MP for the Democratic Party.

Early life

Mićunović's childhood was spent in Skopje (then known as Skoplje) where his father Mile worked as a civil servant. Following the annexation of parts of Yugoslavia by the Nazi puppet state of Albania and Axis Bulgaria, he sought refuge in the allied state of Serbia and fought occupying Axis forces with the Yugoslav Partisans.

After World War II, Mićunović was imprisoned for three years at Goli Otok. He got taken in during March 1949 and was released in May 1952.^[1]

After his release, he became an assistant at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy. He was part of the Marxist humanist Praxis School, and in 1975 he was expelled from the faculty, together with seven other colleagues.

Politics

Mićunović was one of the members of the Founding Committee of the Democratic Party in December 1989 who began the process of re-establishing the Democratic Party (DS). He was elected the first President of the re-established Democratic Party at the founding party conference on February 3, 1990.

He remained the party's president until 1994 when he was squeezed out from the top spot by Zoran Đinđić. Mićunović resigned and with a group of prominent intellectuals, founded the Fond Center for Democracy, a non-governmental organization for the development of civil society and the non-governmental sector, civil education and preparation of political and social reforms.

In 1996, Dragoljub Mićunović founded a new political party, Democratic Centre, of which he was elected president.

He has been an MP in the State and Federal legislatures for more than 10 years. At the first multi-party elections in Serbia in 1990, he was elected a Member of Parliament of Serbia on behalf of the Democratic Party. As a Member of Parliament on the state level, he was elected a delegate to the Chamber of the Republics (upper chamber) of the Federal Parliament of Yugoslavia in the period 1991-1992. At the Federal elections in 1992, Mićunović was elected a Member of the Federal Parliament as a representative of the Democratic Party. As a member of the opposition coalition “Zajedno”, he was re-elected a Member of Federal Parliament in the Chamber of Citizens (lower chamber) in 1996.

At the federal elections in 2000, as one of the leaders of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition, Mićunović was again elected a Member of Parliament in the Chamber of Citizens of the Federal Assembly. After the victory of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia in October 2000, he was elected President of the Chamber of Citizens of the Federal Assembly on November 3, 2000. When the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro was established, in March 2003, Dragoljub Mićunović was elected President of the Parliament of Serbia and Montenegro on March 3 that year. He held this position to March 3, 2004.

Dragoljub Mićunović is the winner of the first award for tolerance awarded by the Ministry for Human Rights, OSCE, and B92 TV and radio station. For his contribution to the admission of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to the Council of Europe he was presented an award by the European Movement in Serbia. In 2001 he was awarded by the Slovakian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for "active contribution to the work of the Community for democratic change in Yugoslavia which assembled representatives of different political parties, civil society and international organizations".

Dragoljub Mićunović's Democratic Centre party merged into the Democratic Party in 2004 and he was one of the leading candidates on the Democratic Party list in the Serbian Parliamentary elections held on January 21, 2007.

References

• Biography (Serbian)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dragoljub Mićunović.

• Interview with Mr. Mićunović in English
• Memoirs of Mićunović (in Serbian)