O the Great one, if my sins were as big as the mountain Kaf,
Don’t care, because it’s insignificant thing when compared to Your grace.
These words ended the story about the only Mayor of Sarajevo who has been elected twice and from two empires – Mehmed Bey Kapetanović Ljubušak.
He was the man at all possible functions in B&H. They also say that he knew how to do it as well…
Mehmed Bey was born in December 1839 in Vitina near Ljubuški, in the family of respected and powerful Beys. Sulejman Bey, the last Captain of Ljubuški, was his grandfather.
Austrians acknowledged Mehmed Bey’s title of Von Vitin. Ljubušak divorced his first wife from Stolac’s family of Rizvanbegovićs, and remarried with Almasa-Hanum in Sarajevo, with whom he lived at Mejdan, near the City Hall – there is no mark on that place today. People said that he loved to “party” and that Herzegovinian gusle used to play from his home until dawn.
Until his arrival in Sarajevo, where he came in the middle of the Herzegovinian uprising after he “left” Trebinje, Ljubušak already had 15 years of experience in administration. He was first elected as the member of the Great Commission for the Austro-Hungarian reform, and later for the Mayor of Sarajevo as well.
Later on, he became a member of the Parliament of Midhat Pasha in Istanbul (Constantinople back than). Congress of Berlin brought “disturbances” in the country, especially in Sarajevo, and Ljubušak went first to Vitina and then to Makarska.
After his return to Sarajevo, along with recommendations and proven loyalty towards the new government, Mehmed Bey carried out a numerous functions and received high honors until the election for mayor of the city back in 1893. During this period, not a single significant event could happen in Sarajevo without Ljubušak participating in it in some way.
“Nothing can happen without him”, it was said back then in Sarajevo.
(Source: Radiosarajevo.ba)
