Slaven Letica

Slaven Letica (born 28 June 1947) is a Croatian author, economist, commentator and politician.

Native of Podgora, Letica graduated from the University of Zagreb Faculty of Economics.^[1] In the 1980s, Letica was a professor of sociology of medicine at the University of Zagreb School of Medicine.

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 and columns and he began to appear in television talk shows and town hall meetings. There he began to show a great talent for self-promotion, quickly becoming one of the most popular and the most recognisable intellectuals in Yugoslavia. Often, the ideas he floated at that time were nothing more than publicity stunts, including campaigning for President of Yugoslavia.

In 1990 after the first democratic elections, Franjo Tuđman took him seriously and made him his chief political advisor. During negotiations which Tuđman pursued with the leader of the Serbs in Croatia, Jovan Rašković, Letica secretly recorded tapes of some of the conversations. Subsequently, he leaked these tapes to the Croatian media, hoping that some of Rašković's remarks would give offense to his fellow 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. As he left, Letica publicly stated that he would have served as a political advisor to Slobodan Milošević if compensated.^[2]

In the following years Letica continued to appear in the Croatian media as a commentator, and became a regular columnist for Globus, a popular news magazine. During his time at Globus he gained some notoriety due to an unsigned opinion piece (which he eventually admitted to have written) in which he attacked five Croatian feminists (Slavenka Drakulić, Vesna Kesić, Jelena Lovrić, Dubravka Ugrešić and Rada Iveković), accusing them of betraying Croatia. ^[3]

In the Croatian presidential election, 2000, Letica ran as an independent candidate. Although he finished fourth, the relatively high percentage of votes he won (4.14%) made him desirable to the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP), a right-wing party in desperate need to tone down its negative far-right image. Letica, with his reputation of a refined urbanite and European intellectual, served this purpose very well and on the Croatian parliamentary election, 2003, as a candidate on HSP's list, won a seat in the Sabor (Parliament of Croatia).^[1]

Using his striking resemblance to Josip Jelačić, a Croatian 19th century national icon, he began to dress up in historical costumes to stage highly publicised political demonstrations. Those efforts, however, backfired and the Croatian public gradually ceased to take Letica seriously.

He also associated at one point with the Croatian True Revival, a one-time political project of Miroslav Tuđman and Nenad Ivanković that failed to gain major traction in Croatian politics.^[2]

The HSP nevertheless used Letica again as their candidate in the Croatian presidential election, 2005. When Letica won fewer votes than in 2000, 2.59%, he accused the HSP of not supporting him enough. He quit the party midway through his term and remained in the Sabor until the end of 2007 as an independent.^[1]

In the Croatian parliamentary election, 2007, his independent list for the Zagreb region failed to gain the five percent of the vote needed to enter the Parliament.

References