Željko Komšić

Infobox President
name = Željko Komšić


imagesize =
caption =
order = President of Bosnia and Herzegovina
primeminister = Nikola Špirić
term_start = 6 July 2007
term_end = 7 March 2008
predecessor = Nebojša Radmanović
successor = Haris Silajdžić
order2 = Croat Member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina
term_start2 = 6 November 2006
term_end2 =
predecessor2 = Ivo Miro Jović
successor2 =
birth_date = bda|1964|01|20|df=y
birth_place = Sarajevo, Yugoslavia
death_date =
death_place =
alma_mater = University of Sarajevo
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service
profession = Lawyer
party = SPB-S
spouse = Sabina
religion = Roman Catholic (lapsed)
Atheist

Željko Komšić (pronounced|ʒɛlʲkɔ komʃitɕ) (born January 20, 1964) is a Bosnian-Herzegovinian politician. On October 1, 2006, he was elected to a four-year term as the member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Early life and the war in Bosnia

Komšić has a law degree from University of Sarajevo and he also studied at Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He is a lawyer by profession.

During the Bosnian war, he served in the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and received the Golden Lilly — the highest military decoration awarded by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian government.

Political career

After the war, Komšić embarked on a political career as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SDP BiH). He was a councilman of the municipality of Novo Sarajevo and in the city council of Sarajevo, before being elected the head of the municipal government of Novo Sarajevo in 2000. He then also served as the deputy mayor of Sarajevo for two years.

When the coalition "Alliance for Democratic Change" came to power in 1998, Komšić was named the ambassador to the now defunct Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in Belgrade. He resigned this commission after the election in 2002 when SDP went back into opposition.

He is one of the three vice-presidents of the Social Democratic Party.

2006 general election

Komšić SDP's candidate for the Croatian seat in the Presidency at the Bosnia and Herzegovina general election, 2006. He received 97,267 or 41% of the vote, ahead of Ivo Miro Jović (25%), Božo Ljubić (18%) and Mladen Ivanković-Lijanović (9%). He was inaugurated into office on October 1, 2006.

His victory was widely attributed to the split in the HDZ BiH party, in which two factions, one led by Jović and the other by Ljubić split their voting body in two and enabled the SDP to achieve majority.

Komšić is staunchly opposed by the some nationalist Bosnian Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina who are supporters of HDZ. He is a self-declared Croat, and a baptized Roman Catholic (coming from a religious family), but unlike most of his compatriots (by and large right-wing), he calls the language he speaks Bosnian (rather than Croatian), and is an atheist himself. He does not have a dual citizenship (both BiH and Croatian), as many other Croats from BiH do, although his wife does. His wife, Sabina, is an ethnic Bosniak.

External links

* [http://www.predsjednistvobih.ba/biogr/?cid=8148,1,1 Official web site of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency] bs icon
* [http://www.zeljkokomsic.ba/ba/ Official web site of Željko Komšić] bs icon
* [http://zeljkokomsic.blogger.ba/ Official blog of Željko Komšić] bs icon