Vuk Drašković

Vuk Drašković
Вук Драшковић
Drašković in 2010
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia
In office 5 June 2006 – 16 May 2007
Prime Minister	Vojislav Koštunica
Preceded by	none (post re-established)
Succeeded by	Vuk Jeremić
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia and Montenegro
In office 3 March 2004 – 5 June 2006
Prime Minister	Svetozar Marović
Preceded by	Goran Svilanović
Succeeded by	none
Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia
In office 18 January 1999 – 28 April 1999
Prime Minister	Momir Bulatović
Personal details
Born	(1946-11-29) 29 November 1946 (age 78) Yugoslavia
Political party	SKJ (until 1982) SNO (1990) SPO (1990–present)
Spouse	Danica Drašković ​ (m. 1973)​
Alma mater	LLB of Univ. of Belgrade Fac. of Law
Occupation	Politician
Profession	Writer
Signature

Vuk Drašković (

He graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law in 1968. From 1969 to 1980, he worked as a journalist in the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug. He was a member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and worked as the chief of staff of the Yugoslav President Mika Špiljak.

Drašković was born in the small village of Medja in the Banat region to a family of settlers from Herzegovina. He was three months old when his mother, Stoja Nikitović, died.^[1]

His father, Vidak, remarried and had two more sons - Rodoljub and Dragan; and three daughters - Radmila, Tanja and Ljiljana with Dara Drašković, meaning that young Vuk grew up with five half-siblings.^[1]

Shortly after Vuk's birth, the entire family went back to Herzegovina where he finished primary school in the village of Slivlje. He graduated high school in Gacko.^[1]

At his father's insistence, Drašković considered studying medicine in Sarajevo; however, the city was too "uptight and cramped" for his liking, so he went to study law in Belgrade instead.

In 1968, Drašković participated in anti-bureaucratic student revolts in Yugoslavia.[2] After Josip Broz Tito promised reforms, Drašković initiated people to dance the Kozaračko kolo at the Faculty of Law.^[2][3] Drašković was a member of the Communist Youth Organization and later joined the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.^[4]

Between 1969–78, he was involved with journalism. He first worked for the state news agency

He then took a job as press adviser to the Yugoslav Union of Trade Unions (Savez Sindikata Jugoslavije) and then became editor-in-chief of Rad, a trade union paper.[4] During his time as press adviser, Drašković spent some time as the personal secretary to the organisation's president Mika Špiljak.

In 1981, Drašković published his first novel Sudije (Judges) which described a judge resisting political pressure.^[4]

In 1982, Drašković was expelled from the Communist party after he published his second novel Nož (Knife).^[2] The novel tells the story of a man who is raised as a Bosnian Muslim who comes to believe that Serbs killed his family, only to later learn that his ethnic heritage is Serbian and that his adoptive family was guilty of murdering his birth-family. The book caused controversy as it reignited divisive ethno-nationalist issues which Tito and the Communist Party tried to suppress.^[2] The party condemned and subsequently banned the book, which was also published in English.^[5] The book was made into a movie in 1999 entitled The Dagger or The Knife in English.^[6]

His novels Molitva 1–2 (Prayer 1–2, 1985) and Ruski konsul (Russian consul, 1988) also explored the suffering of Serbs during World War II, while Noć generala (The General's Nights) published in 1994 dealt with Draža Mihailović's last days.^[4]

In March 1989, Drašković along with

Drašković became a leading opponent of Milošević. His fiery and emotional speeches[15] earned him the moniker "Czar of the Streets".^[16][17]

While Drašković was a nationalist, he also held pro-Western and anti-war views.^[15] His plan was to rapidly transform the biggest and most populous part of Yugoslavia (i.e. Serbia) according to Western standards so that eventual international involvement in the Yugoslav crisis would favour Serbian interests and produce a peaceful solution.^{[citation needed]} His ideological opponents often cite his strong nationalist feelings (including attempting rehabilitation of Serb-nationalist Chetniks) as contradictory to his insistence on peaceful solutions.^[15] Political opponents have claimed Drašković's political engagement at this early stage of his political career was full of inconsistencies and diametrically opposing views and actions. According to Drašković, his stance as pro-Western and peaceful never wavered, from the start of the political crisis in Yugoslavia. He insisted that a Serbian government should promote radical democratic shift, and renew traditional alliances with Western nations (including entry into NATO) as a way of preserving some form of Yugoslav confederation rather than pursuing direct confrontation with the Croats.^{[citation needed]}

His party SPO organized a paramilitary unit called the Serbian Guard, led by former criminals such as Đorđe "Giška" Božović and Branislav "Beli" Matić. Božović died in Croatia in October 1991. Matić was killed by Milošević's secret police in April 1991. Although Drašković initially claimed that this militia was an incitement to Serbian authorities to form a non-ideological national armed force other than the Yugoslav People's Army, he eventually distanced himself from the paramilitary formation altogether.^[15]

According to historian Dubravka Stojanović, while Drašković's anti-war views were sincere, he also supported a nationalist program little different in its goals to those of Milošević, and he and his party were never able to reconcile these opposing currents.^[18]

His anti-war views came to the fore in mid to late 1991, particularly in November of that year when he wrote a passionate condemnation of the bloody siege of Vukovar in the Serbian daily Borba.^[19]

In early 1992, he called on all citizens of Bosnia to reject nationalism. In 1993, he and his wife Danica Drašković were arrested, beaten and sent to a high-security prison following street riots in Belgrade.^[2] His hunger strike, and international outrage over the situation, pressured the government to release the couple.^[20]

In 1996, SPO formed an opposition alliance Zajedno ("Together") with the Democratic Party of Zoran Đinđić and the Civic Alliance of Serbia under Vesna Pešić, which achieved major successes in the local elections in November of that year, but later split.^[15]

Drašković's SPO participated on its own at the September 1997 election, boycotted by his former partners despite an array of local electronic media outlets being in opposition hands.^{[citation needed]}

In January 1999, SPO, a parliamentary party, was asked to join a coalition with Milošević's

In 2005, Milorad Ulemek was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder of Đinđić and Ivan Stambolić and for the assassination attempt on Drašković in 2000.^[25]

In what he himself later termed "a bad political move", Drašković kept his SPO out of the wide anti-Milošević Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition that formed in 2000; his candidate in the 24 September 2000 federal presidential elections, Vojislav Mihailović, achieved little success, and the SPO was unsuccessful in the subsequent parliamentary election which the DOS won overwhelmingly. Because of this, Drašković and his party were marginalized over the next three years.^{[citation needed]}

In the fall of 2002, he attempted a comeback as one of eleven candidates in a Serbian presidential election; this election was later declared invalid due to low voter turnout. Despite a polished marketing campaign that saw Drašković change his personal appearance and tone down his fiery rhetoric, he ended up with only 4.5% of the total vote, well behind Vojislav Koštunica (31.2%) and Miroljub Labus (27.7%), both of whom moved on to the second-round runoff.

His next chance for political redemption came in late 2003. Fully aware of SPO's weak political standing (as well as his own) after more than 3 years in political oblivion, Drašković entered his party into a pre-election coalition with

In August 2010, Drašković argued in favour of changing the Serbian Constitution of 2006 to remove references to Kosovo as a part of Serbia because according to him "Serbia has no national sovereignty over Kosovo whatsoever. All of Serbia knows that Kosovo is not really a province within Serbia, that it is completely beyond the control of the government and the state of Serbia".^[27]

Drašković is married to Danica (née Bošković). The two met in 1968 during student protests.^[2]

• March 9th Protest
• Ibar Highway assassination attempt

External links

• Party biography
• Official biography as a Minister of Foreign Affairs

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vuk Drašković.

Government offices
New seat	Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia and Montenegro 1999 – 1999 With: Zoran Lilić Jovan Zebić Nikola Šainović Danilo Vuksanović Vladan Kutlešić	Succeeded by Maja Gojković
		Succeeded by Tomislav Nikolić
Preceded by Goran Svilanović	Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia and Montenegro 2004 – 2006	Union of Serbia and Montenegro abolished
New ministerial post	Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia 2006 – 2007	Succeeded by Vuk Jeremić