Zlatko Lagumdžija

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Zlatko Lagumdžija
Born December 26, 1955
Sarajevo, BiH

Dr. Zlatko Lagumdžija born (December 26, 1955 in Sarajevo) is a Bosnian politician and academic, known for his leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) of Bosnia and Herzegovina and for having moderate and anti-nationalist political views. He is currently a member of the House of Representatives in the Bosnian Parliamentary Assembly and a professor at the University of Sarajevo.

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[edit] Education

Lagumdžija earned his high school diploma as a part of the Youth for Understanding exchange student program in Detroit, Michigan in 1971. His subsequent education was at the University of Sarajevo, where he earned a B.Sc in 1977, an M.Sc in 1981 and a PhD in 1988 in the field of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. In 1989, as a Fulbright program participant, he did postdoctoral research at the University of Arizona in the Department of Management Information Systems and the Center for Computing and Information Technology.

[edit] Academic career

Lagumdžija began teaching at the University of Sarajevo in 1989 as a professor of Management Information Systems (MIS) and Informatics at the Economics Faculty and Projected Information Systems and Group Support Systems at the Electrical Engineering Faculty. He has served as the chair of the department of Management and Information Systems at the Economics Faculty since 1994 and the director of the director of the Management and Information Technologies Center (an organizational unit of the Economics Faculty) since 1995. His particular academic interests lie in the areas of Group Support Systems and Management Information Systems. He is also interested in the strategic use of information technology for business process reengineering, managing transition and leading change. He is the author of six books and over a hundred papers in the field of Management Information Systems.[1]

At the end of the war, Lagumdžija helped to secure funds from the Soros Foundation with which to rebuild the Group Support System facility at the University of Sarajevo. The strategic objective of the Management and Information Technologies Center, which housed the GSS facility, was to "assist and promote the transition of Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H) to a democratic, market-driven economy."[2] As a part of that mandate, the Center held sessions for key business and government leaders as well as students at the University of Sarajevo utilizing GSS technology to assist them in thinking about and planning for the economic reconstruction of Sarajevo.

[edit] Political Career

[edit] War time political career

Lagumdžija began his political career during the war as the Deputy Prime Minister. In that role, he advised then-president Alija Izetbegović. In one particular case he advised him not to sign the Vance-Owen peace plan: "Mr Izetbegović was not endorsing it, but thinking out loud and saying perhaps the plan would not be so bad, that we could live with it. And some of us told him, 'Anyone who signs this plan will not only be politically dead…'" he told a New York Times reporter in February 1993.[3] Izetbegović signed the peace plan in March 1993.

In May 1992, Lagumdžija was with Alija Izetbegović, Izetbegović’s daughter Sabina and his bodyguard, returning from the Lisbon negotiations, when they were surrounded at the Sarajevo airport by the JNA, kidnapped and driven in a convoy to Lukavica, in Serb-held territory.[4]

In April, 1993, Lagumdžija met with a group of citizens from Srebrenica who had journeyed through the Serb lines to Sarajevo. They informed him of the desperate situation of Srebrenica and the eastern Bosnian enclaves. In an effort to highlight the plight of Srebrenica, Lagumdžija suspended humanitarian aid donations for Sarajevo until aid was delivered to the eastern enclaves. A month later, UN Commander Phillipe Morillon visited Srebrenica and declared the citizens under the protection of the UN.[5]

[edit] Post-war political career

As a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lagumdžija has served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly since 1996. He has been the president of the SDP since 1997. In the 2000 general elections, the SDP formed a coalition with the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (SBiH), a party founded and led by former wartime prime minister Haris Silajdžić, to gain the majority and force the nationalist parties out of power. They gathered a coalition of many other small parties to create the "Alliance for Change." Lagumdžija became the Foreign Minister, a post he served in from 2001-2003, and also the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, (i.e. the Prime Minister, as which he served until 2002).

When the SDP came into political power on a platform of economic reform and anti-corruption, Lagumdžija was lauded by the Western powers as the hopeful "face of a pluralistic, united Bosnia."[6] The SPD-led government facilitated the passage of the Election Law, which was not only an important step towards democracy, but also a prerequisite towards Bosnia's accession to the Council of Europe.[7] The SDP led the coalition government until the October 2002 general elections, when the public, dissatisfied at the pace of political reform, elected the nationalist parties back into power.[8]

[edit] Controversies

[edit] "Algerian group"

After September 11, 2001, Lagumdžija was the target of criticism surrounding the case of the so-called "Algerian group." In October 2001, five Algerian citizens and a Yemeni citizen were arrested on suspicion that they had ties with Al-Qaeda and were planning an attack against the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. The suspects who also had Bosnian citizenship were stripped of that status by the Bosnian government. However, in January 2002, after the Bosnian Supreme Court found that there was a lack of evidence against them and ordered them released, the prisoners were instead transferred to U.S. custody and brought to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.[9] Many Bosnian Muslims as well as international human rights officials were angered by this action, as they claimed it violated the rule of law and the protection of human rights, and the controversy received much coverage in the local press.[10] Lagumdžija was depicted on the cover of Dani, a popular weekly magazine, watching an illustrated Uncle Sam urinate on a copy of the Bosnian constitution.[11] Defending his actions, Lagumdžija told Dani that the Council of Ministers made the decision to extradite the prisoners with the best intelligence that they had and that had they not, Bosnia would have lost its status as a state and have been "treated like Afghanistan."[12][13][14]

[edit] "Coup d`Etat Affair"

In September 2003, Lagumdžija and Munir Alibabić, the former director of the Federation Intelligence and Security Service (FOSS), were accused of conspiring to take over the government by Ivan Vuksić, the FOSS director at the time. The accusations were based on the illegal recordings of telephone conversations between the two men. The Sarajevo daily paper Dnevni Avaz, picked up the story and ran a series of articles which attacked Lagumdžija and blamed him of being behind the August 2003 explosions that had taken place in Sarajevo. Lagumdžija denied the accusations and released a public statement to the court, which read in part, "Any well-informed and well-intentioned person will know that all these accusations are based on vicious lies, and that their progenitors are provoking a situation, which would bring them to face justice in court in any organized democratic state."[15] The courts dismissed the accusations, Lagumdžija eventually sued Dnevni Avaz for slander and the newspaper was ordered to pay him 10,000 KM in damages.

[edit] Personal Life

Lagumdžija is married to Amina, and has two children, Dina and Zlatko-Salko.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Lagumdzija, Z. Retrieved Oct. 18, 2006. Web site: http://www.zlatko-lagumdzija.ba/cv_en.htm
  2. ^ Zlatko Lagumdzija, Mark Adkins, Doug Vogel, "Rebuilding Sarajevo Using Partnerships" hicss, p. 479, 30th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) Volume 2: Information Systems Track-Collaboration Systems and Technology, 1997.
  3. ^ Gelb, Leslie H. "Sarajevo, Dead and Alive. [Op-Ed]" New York Times 7 Feb. 1993: E21.
  4. ^ Silber, L., & Little, A. (1996). Yugoslavia: Death of a nation. New York: Penguin, 231-243.
  5. ^ Ibid, 266.
  6. ^ Kaminski, Matthew. "The West’s man in Bosnia." Wall Street Journal 28 Jun. 2000: A16.
  7. ^ (2001). OHR and OSCE Welcome Adoption of Election Law. Retrieved Nov. 1, 2006, from OHR. Web site: http://www.ohr.int/ohr-dept/presso/pressr/default.asp?content_id=5393
  8. ^ (2006). Bosnia Herzegovina Update. Retrieved Nov. 1, 2001, from European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity. Web site: http://www.europeanforum.net/country/bosnia/
  9. ^ Williams, Daniel. "Hand-over of terrorism suspects to U.S. angers many in Bosnia." The Washington Post 31 Jan. 2002: A18.
  10. ^ (2003). The United States and international human rights. In Assessing the new normal: Liberty and security for the post-September 11 United States. Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. Website: http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/pubs/descriptions/Assessing/Ch5.pdf
  11. ^ Dani, br. 241 25 January 2002. Retrieved Nov. 1, 2006. http://www.bhdani.com/arhiva/241/sadrzaj.shtml
  12. ^ Trofimov, Yaroslav. "Seeds of hate: in post-war Bosnia, militant Islam turns U.S. allies to enemies." The Wall Street Journal 18 Mar. 2002: A1.
  13. ^ “Interview given by Mr. Zlatko Lagumdžija, Minister of Foreign Affairs of BiH” Retrieved Nov. 1, 2006. Website: http://www.mvp.gov.ba/HTML/Interview_SB_0502.pdf
  14. ^ Pećanin, Senad. “Zašto morali isporučiti Alžirsku grupu.” Dani, br. 243 8 February 2002. Retrieved Nov. 1, 2006. Website: http://www.bhdani.com/arhiva/243/intervju.shtml
  15. ^ Alic, A. (2003). Quelling coups. Transitions Online

[edit] External links

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