Slaven Letica
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Slaven Letica is a Croatian author, commentator and politician.
In the 1980s, Letica used to be a professor of Sociology of Medicine at the Medical Faculty of the University of Zagreb.
In late 1980s, as the Communist grip on public discourse weakened, Letica began to use new freedoms to advocate various reforms. In doing so, he wrote many articles, columns and began to appear in television talk shows and town hall meetings. There he began to show great talent for self-promotion, quickly becoming one of the most popular and the most recognisable intellectuals of Yugoslavia. Some of his ideas floated at that time were often nothing more than publicity stunts, including his candidacy for President of Yugoslavia and offering the services of political advisor to Slobodan Milošević.
In 1990 it was Franjo Tuđman who took this offer seriously and made him his chief political advisor. As such, Letica never missed an opportunity for self-promotion. One of which were the negotiations between Tuđman and the leader of the Serbs in Croatia, Jovan Rašković, after which Letica had secretly recorded tapes of the conversation leaked to Croatian media, hoping that some of Rašković's remarks would sound insulting to Croatian Serbs and turn them away from Rašković's secessionist policies. The effort spectacularly backfired and contributed to the escalation of conflict into war. That and other gaffes finally prompted Tuđman to sack Letica in early 1991.
In the next few years Letica continued to appear in Croatian media as a commentator, finally becoming a columnist in the magazine Globus. There he received some notoriety due to an unsigned article (which he eventually admitted to having written) directed against five Croatian feminists (including Slavenka Drakulić), accusing them of betraying Croatia.
In 2000 Letica ran for Croatian president as independent candidate. Although he finished 4th, relatively high percentage of votes made him desirable to the Croatian Party of Rights, a right-wing party in desperate need to tone down its negative far-right image. Letica, with his reputation of refined urban and European intellectual, served this purpose very well and in 2003 won Sabor seat on HSP list.
Back in the public spotlight, Letica again couldn't resist the temptation for self-promotion. Using his striking resemblance to Josip Jelačić, a Croatian 19th century national icon, he began to dress up in historic costumes to stage highly-publicised political demonstrations. Those efforts, however, backfired and the Croatian public gradually ceased to take Letica seriously.
HSP nevertheless used Letica as their candidate in the 2005 presidential elections. When Letica won less votes than in 2000, he accused HSP of not supporting him enough. He left the party and now he sits in Sabor as independent representative.
