France Bučar

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France Bučar
National Assembly of Slovenia
In office
17 May 1990 – 23 December 1992
Preceded byNew position
Succeeded byHerman Rigelnik
Personal details
Born(1923-02-02)2 February 1923
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
Died21 October 2015(2015-10-21) (aged 92)
Bohinjska Bistrica, Slovenia
Political partySlovenian Democratic Union
SpouseIvka Bučar
Alma materUniversity of Ljubljana
ProfessionLawyer, Academic, Politologist

France Bučar (2 February 1923 – 21 October 2015) was a Slovenian politician, legal expert and author. Between 1990 and 1992, he served as the first speaker of the freely elected Slovenian Parliament.[1] He was the one to formally declare the independence of Slovenia on 25 June 1991. He is considered one of the founding fathers of Slovenian democracy and independence. He is also considered, together with Peter Jambrek, the main author of the current Slovenian constitution.

Biography

Bučar was born in the small

Roman Catholic religious affiliation. In May 1945, he was in the military unit that liberated Klagenfurt
.

After the end of the war, Bučar was included in the Slovenian division of the Corps of National Defence (later renamed to

University of Philadelphia
.

In 1962, he started teaching public administration at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana. During this period, Bučar started openly voicing his criticism to certain features of the Yugoslav

student movement
in the years 1968–1972.

After 1968, he published numerous articles criticizing the establishment of large business systems in Yugoslavia, the frequent changes in the legal framework and the lack of clear responsibilities in decision-making processes. In 1976, he was fired from the university and was not allowed to publish anything for five years.

In the 1980s, he started collaborating with the alternative journal Nova revija. In early 1988, he was invited to speak at the European Parliament; he caused a scandal in Yugoslavia by proposing to block all economic aid to the socialist countries of Eastern Europe in order to force them to adopt economic and political reform.

In 1989, he was among the co-founders of the

Slovenian National Assembly. As the speaker of the Parliament and member of the Constitution Committee, Bučar had a crucial role in the adoption of the new Slovenian constitution. During this period, Bučar insisted on providing a sound legal basis for Slovenia's independence from Yugoslavia, and rejected all voluntaristic political actions, gaining a label of legalist
.

After the split in the Slovenian Democratic Union, Bučar joined the

Democratic Party led by Dimitrij Rupel
. He was re-elected to the National Assembly in 1992 and became the chairman of the Committee for the Control over the Secret Service. In 1993, he left the party, remaining an independent MP until the elections of 1996.

In 1996, he unsuccessfully ran as mayor of Ljubljana backed by a coalition of centre-right parties. In 2002, he unsuccessfully ran for President of Slovenia as an independent candidate.

Until May 2012, he was the president of the

International Paneuropean Union
for Slovenia.

In June 2012, Bučar stated in an interview for the magazine Mladina that the democracy in Slovenia was very weak, with the power concentrated in the hands of a few people, as in the time of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia before 1991, and that the Parliament was only a formal institution.[2]

Bučar lived in Ljubljana. Besides Slovene, he was fluent in German, English, and Serbo-Croatian. He died on 21 October 2015 at the age of 92.[3]

Major works

  • Naš bodoči razvoj (Our Future Development; Ljubljana, 1961)
  • Pot napredka (The Path of Progress; Ljubljana, 1961)
  • Kakšen gospodarski sistem? (What Kind of Economic System? Ljubljana, 1963)
  • Podjetje in družba (Business and Society; Ljubljana, 1972)
  • Upravljanje (Administration; Ljubljana, 1981)
  • Resničnost in utvara (Reality and Illusion; Maribor, 1986)
  • Usodne odločitve (Fatal Decisions; Ljubljana, 1988)
  • Prehod čez Rdeče morje (Crossing the Red Sea; Ljubljana, 1993)
  • Ujetniki preteklosti (Prisoners of the Past; Ljubljana, 1995)
  • Slovenija in evropski izzivi (Slovenia and the European Challenges; Ljubljana, 1996)
  • Demokracija in kriza naših ustavnih inštitucij (Democracy and the Crisis of Our Constitutional Institutions; Ljubljana, 1998)
  • Porušena harmonija sveta (The Destroyed Harmony of the World; Dob pri Domžalah, 2003)
  • Na novih razpotjih (At New Crossroads; Celje, 2006)
  • Rojstvo države (Birth of a Nation; Radovljica, 2007)
  • Slovenci in prihodnost (The Slovenians and the Future; Radovljica, 2009)
  • Temelji naše državnosti (Foundations of Our Statehood; Ljubljana, 2012)

See also

References

  1. ^ France Bučar, a Founding Father of Slovenian Democracy, Dies. 2015. STA (21 October).
  2. ^ "Bučar: "Danes je mehanizem popolnoma enak kot v časih partije"" [Bučar: "Mechanism Today Completely the Same as in Party Times"]. Dnevnik.si (in Slovenian). 15 June 2012.
  3. ^ "Poslovil se je France Bučar, starosta slovenske politike" [France Bučar, Veteran of Slovenian Politics, Passes Away]. RTV Slovenija. 2015-10-21. Retrieved 2015-10-21.

External links


Political offices
New title
Speaker of the National Assembly of Slovenia

9 May 1990 – 17 December 1992 		Succeeded by
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