Sarajevo City Council Chairman Igor Gavric convened the body’s constituent session on Wednesday, at which Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital should get a new mayor after last year’s elections.
City councilors who have been given a mandate by the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina will take over the duty of city councilor by publicly giving and signing a solemn statement in accordance with the Rules of Procedure of the Sarajevo City Council.
The session will elect a chairman of the City Council, two deputy chairmen, and a new mayor and deputy mayors of Sarajevo should be elected, it was announced.
The only candidate for mayor of Sarajevo is Bogic Bogicevic at the suggestion of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), while Nasa stranka nominated Anja Margetic, an athlete and member of the BiH swimming team, as deputy mayor, and Narod ipravda nominated Haris Basic as the second deputy mayor.
According to the agreement of the coalition partners, Jasmin Ademovic (People and Justice) should be appointed chairman of the City Council, and deputies Dragan Stevanovic (SDP) and Mirela Dzahverovic (Nasa Stranka).
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.
