Ivo Josipović

Josipović's parents, originally from Baška Voda, a small town near Makarska in Dalmatia, had moved to capital Zagreb in 1956, about a year before he was born.[9] As a high school student, Josipović attended both the V. Gymnasium and a secondary music school in Zagreb from 1972 to 1976.[9] As a teenager he was a promising football player.[10] He is married to Tatjana, a civil law professor and legal expert.[11] They have one daughter, Lana (born c. 1991).[11][12]

Apart from his native Croatian, he speaks English fluently and has some understanding of German.[13]

Politics

Victory speech of Ivo Josipović on 10 January 2010.

In 1980 Ivo Josipović became a member of the League of Communists of Croatia.[22] He played a key role in the democratic transformation of this party as the author of the first statute of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDP). In 1994, he left politics and the SDP, dedicating himself to law and music. Upon the invitation of Ivica Račan, acting Prime Minister at the time, he returned to politics in 2003, and became an independent MP with the SDP and Vice-President of the SDP Representatives' Group in the Croatian Parliament. During his mandate in 2005, he was also a representative in the Assembly of the City of Zagreb. In 2007, he was re-elected to the Croatian Parliament. He formally renewed his SDP membership in 2008. On 12 July 2009 he was elected as the party's official presidential candidate.[12] As MP he served on various parliamentary committees dealing with legislative, judiciary and constitutional questions, as well as for defining parliamentary rules of procedure and the political system.[12]

After serving two consecutive five-year terms, the incumbent president Stjepan Mesić was not eligible to run in the scheduled 2009 presidential election. On 20 June 2009, Josipović was nominated as one of the official SDP candidates for the Croatian presidential election, 2009–2010.[23] He won in a primary against Ljubo Jurčić on 12 July, becoming the party's official candidate.

Josipović based his campaign on the slogan 'Justice for Croatia' and kicked off his campaign with a rally in front of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. He attacked the current Croatian government and the prime minister Jadranka Kosor for ignoring the needs of the little man and criticized her for not dealing with corruption.[24]

On 27 December 2009, Josipović won the first round of the presidential election with 32.42% of the vote. He faced Milan Bandić, an expelled member of the SDP running as an independent, (runner-up with 14.83%) in the second round on 10 January 2010. Subsequently, on 10 January 2010 he was elected as the 3rd president of Croatia with 60.26% of the vote, beating Milan Bandić in the second round.[25]

Polish President Lech Kaczyński with Ivo Josipović in 2010

Croat member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Dragan Čović with Ivo Josipović in Mostar in 2014

In April 2010, Josipović met with the Bosnian Croat Catholic archbishop cardinal Vinko Puljić and the head of the Islamic Community reis Mustafa Cerić and the three made a joint visit at the sites of Ahmići massacre and Križančevo selo killings, and paid respect to the victims.[26] Ivo Josipović made an official visit to Bosnia during which he addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina,[27] and in his speech he expressed a "deep regret" for Croatia's involvement in efforts to divide Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, resulting in the Croat–Bosniak war and suffering for many people on both sides.[28] The presidency of the Croatian Democratic Union condemned the apology.[29] Jadranka Kosor, the current Prime Minister and member of the Croatian Democratic Union, criticized Josipović and accused him of breaching the constitution.[30] The vice president of the Croatian Democratic Union, Andrija Hebrang, contested that Josipović should have visited Bleiburg before Ahmići and Grabovica.[31]

He has chosen a couple of counselors who have caused scandals.[32] Josipović's first option as counselour for rural areas and agriculture was Mato Mlinarić, who was dismissed two hours after being appointed when the press discovered that he had some non-paid tax debts.[33] Former journalist Drago Pilsel served as Josipović's counselor for a month, but left the position after a publishing a column in which he insulted his opponents.[34][35]

In May 2010, Josipović met the leaders of the Republika Srpska Rajko Kuzmanović and Milorad Dodik, as well as the prominent Bosniak leader Sulejman Tihić, and visited the site of the Sijekovac killings to pay respect to the victims.[36] The site and the visit provoked some controversy in the Croatian public, with allegations of impropriety levelled against President Josipović and the authorities of Republika Srpska for misattributing some of the casualties.[37] During a visit to Israel in February 2012, Josipović apologized for atrocities committed against Jews by the Croatian Ustaše regime during the 1940s. Josipović's apology was accompanied by criticism in Croatia because his predecessor Stjepan Mesić had already apologized earlier for the crimes. Josipović also said that "he is the son of Tito's partisan".[38] During a speech at the commemoration for the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp in May 2014, Josipović described the crimes that happened in Jasenovac as genocide. During his speech, Josipović stressed that the vast majority of Croatian people fought against Ustasha policies during the Second World War by participating in an anti-fascist movement, urging everyone not to forget that "exclusivity, hatred and intolerance and the evils of fascism and other totalitarian ideologies" are still present in today's societies so that WWII crimes would never repeat, stating that "unity and determination are the only true power against the new Auschwitz, Jasenovac, Ovčara and Srebrenica".[39][40][41][42]

Standing in opinion polls

Ivo Josipović's approval ratings since taking office (conducted by IpsosPuls).

In the year 2010, President Josipović had on average maintained a very high 81% approval rating (according to Ipsos), surpassing the former president Stjepan Mesić.[43] With ratings reaching as high as 84% in May, August and December[44] in 2010 and 2011, Ivo Josipović was ranked as the most popular Croatian politician in the past 20 years (with the possible exception of Franjo Tuđman), since Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia.[45] However, while he remains the most popular Croatian active politician, in the first half of the 2012 his popularity suffered a decline: from ratings of over 80% at the end of 2011 and 84% in February 2012, to 74.2% in March 2012 and 68.8% in April 2012.[46] Also, according to the polls for the 2015 presidential elections, he had a lead of about 10% against the winner of the elections, raising doubts about the methodology of the surveys.[47][48]

Ivo Josipović's approval ratings

Date	Event	Approval (%)
27 February 2010	Inauguration	78[49]
25 March 2010	First month in office	83[50]
30 April 2010	After apologizing in Croatia's name	84[51]
25 November 2010	Serbian president apologizes for Vukovar	81[52]
28 January 2012	Personal High	88[53]
25 August 2014	Personal Low	68[54]

President Josipović announced plans to seek reelection in the 2014 presidential election, with his electoral program focusing on amendments to the constitution and the decentralization of Croatia.

The first round of elections took place on 28 December 2014, with Josipović narrowly coming in ahead of his main challenger Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović of the conservative Croatian Democratic Union. Ivo Josipović received 38.46% of the vote, which represented 22.000 more votes than Grabar-Kitarović, who was at 37.22%, but both failed to win more than 50% of the vote, leading to a runoff. As the two most voted candidates, Josipović and Grabar-Kitarović proceeded to the second round on 11 January 2015. As the votes were being counted on election night, Grabar-Kitarović was predicted as the winner by media sources, taking 51.4% according to exit polls. However, as official results began to come in, Josipović took an initial lead, but Grabar-Kitarović overtook the incumbent to ultimately win by a margin of only 32.509 votes, even as voting continued to take place in parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where problems had arisen due to issues with voting papers. Josipović lost the election by a wafer-thin margin of 1.989 votes if the diaspora vote is not taken into account and he conceded defeat to Grabar-Kitarović, who thus became the first female President-elect of Croatia, later in the evening. His term formally expired at midnight on 18 February 2015, while his successor had already been inaugurated on 15 February.

After having lost his bid for reelection Josipović founded a new political party called Forward Croatia-Progressive Alliance and announced that he planned to contest the upcoming parliamentary elections that were to be held late in 2015. Josipović also refused to have his own office and staff, to which he was entitled for a period of five years after leaving office as president.

Josipović's Forward Croatia-Progressive Alliance signed a coalition agreement with the People's Party - Reformists, led by former Economy minister Radimir Čačić. Josipović was a candidate in the 1st electoral district, where the coalition won only 1.01% of the vote (or 2365 votes), compared with the 1.54% it received nationwide.[55]

Josipović was a candidate in the 1st electoral district as a member of the Restart Coalition (Croatian: Restart koalicija), led by Davor Bernardić, chairman of the SDP. He was not successful as he received 3,013 preferential votes, or 7.78% of all votes cast for the Restart Coalition in the 1st electoral district, under the 10% threshold required to be elected.[56]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ivo Josipović.

• Ivo Josipović on Facebook
• Ivo Josipović Main campaign page (in Croatian)
• Ivo Josipović Personal homepage (in Croatian)
• Ivo Josipović at the Croatian Parliament (Sabor) official web site (in Croatian)
• Ivo Josipović at the Croatian Composers' Society official web site (in Croatian)
• List of musical works (in Croatian)
• SDP-ovac koji je devet godina izbjegavao Račana (in Croatian)