A candidate for the mayor of Sarajevo, Bogic Bogicevic sent a letter to the SDP BiH President Nermin Niksic yesterday evening, informing him of his irrevocable decision to withdraw his candidacy for the position.
Bogicevic stated that his nomination has obviously become a stumbling block in the coalition relations of the “Four”, which, in this event, showed a lack of unity at yesterday’s session of the Sarajevo City Council.
He believes that this disharmony is a kind of message that within that coalition he was not a desirable candidate for the mentioned position.
Bogićević pointed out that he did not want to disrupt inter-party relations, nor did he want his name to be used in inappropriate political and election games, which was what we witnessed at yesterday’s session of the Sarajevo City Council.
Bogić Bogićević, born on 15th May 1953, is a Bosnian politician. He served as the 6th Bosnian member of the Yugoslav Presidency from 1989 until its abolishment in 1992. Following the 2020 Bosnian municipal elections, he was chosen as the next Mayor of Sarajevo.
He was elected member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia by a referendum of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 25 June 1989, among five candidates, thus becoming the first democratically elected member of the collective Yugoslav Presidency. In addition, he served as President of Yugoslavia’s Federal Council for the Protection of the Constitutional Order.
On 12 March 1991, Bogićević famously defied fellow Presidency members from Serbia on a vote which would have imposed martial law in Yugoslavia. Formally, the military leadership proposed raising combat readiness, but the real goal was to introduce military rule in Slovenia and Croatia and to overthrow the new political leaderships of Kiro Gligorov in Macedonia and of Alija Izetbegović in his native Bosnia and Herzegovina. The pro-Milošević faction, which already controlled the Presidency votes from Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, counted on his vote as a fellow Serb. Bogićević rejected the proposal, and thus by one vote, the Yugoslav Presidency rejected the imposition of martial law. He reportedly commented on his vote, which historians deemed “fateful”: “I am a Serb, but not by profession”. His decision was decried by the Serbian Democratic Party, who claimed that Bogićević did not represent the Serbs,[6] and he was deprived of his presidential salary as a punishment. He later started working for the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SDP BiH).
Together with Macedonian Presidency member Vasil Tupurkovski, In July 1991 Bogićević mediated negotiations between the Slovenian government and the JNA Supreme Command on the release of recruits and the unblocking of barracks during the Ten-Day War between the Slovenian Territorial Defence and the Yugoslav People’s Army.
Bogićević spent the wartime period between 1992 to 1995 in Sarajevo under siege. He was a member of the House of Representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and vice president of SDP BiH.
