Željko Komšić


Željko Komšić is a Bosnian politician and diplomat who is the 11th and current Croat member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He served as the Presidency member already from 2006 until 2014, and he was elected to the same office for a third term in the 2018 election, thus becoming the second Presidency member overall and the first, and so far only Croat member to serve more than two terms. He was sworn in on 20 November 2018, along with fellow newly elected presidency members Šefik Džaferović and Milorad Dodik.
Komšić was a prominent figure of the Social Democratic Party until he left it in 2012 to establish the Democratic Front a year later.

Personal life and education

Komšić was born in Sarajevo to a Bosnian Croat father, Marko, and Bosnian Serb mother Danica.. His mother, Danica, was killed by a sniper of the Armed forces of the Republika Srpska as she sipped coffee in her apartment during the Siege of Sarajevo. According to many, this event was his breaking point, as at the time, he was enlisted in the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Komšić would go on to earn the Order of the Golden Lily, which was at the time the highest state order awarded for military merits. His maternal grandfather Marijan Stanić, who was a Chetnik during World War II, died two years before Komšić was born. The Stanić family hailed from the village of Kostajnica, near Doboj. Komšić was baptised a Catholic, like his father. However, being a religious-skeptic, he left the Catholic church. He is a self-described agnostic.
Komšić has a Bachelor of Laws' degree from the Faculty of Law of University of Sarajevo. He was chosen to represent Bosnia and Herzegovina in selective annual Georgetown Leadership Seminar in 2003. His wife Sabina, is an ethnic Bosniak. The couple has a daughter named Lana.
Komšić was one of the signatories of the Declaration on the Common Language for Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins.

Bosnian war

During the Bosnian war, Komšić served in the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and received the Golden Lily — the highest military decoration awarded by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian government.

Early political career

After the war, Komšić embarked on a political career as a member of the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was a councilman of the municipality of Novo Sarajevo and in the city council of Sarajevo, before being elected the head of the municipal government of Novo Sarajevo in 2000. He then also served as the deputy mayor of Sarajevo for two years. When the "Alliance for Democratic Change" coalition came to power in 1998, Komšić was named the ambassador to the now defunct FR Yugoslavia in Belgrade. He resigned this commission after the election in 2002 when SDP went back into opposition.

Presidency

First term (2006–2010)

Komšić was SDP's candidate for the Croat seat in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 2006 Bosnian general election. He received 116,062 votes, or 39.6% ahead of Ivo Miro Jović, Božo Ljubić, Mladen Ivanković-Lijanović, Zvonko Jurišić and Irena Javor-Korjenić. He was sworn into office on 1 October 2006. His victory was widely attributed to a split in the HDZ-BiH party, enabling the SDP to win a majority of the Bosniaks votes.
Croats see him as an illegitimate representative of the Bosnian Croats because he was elected mostly by Bosniak voters.
In May 2008, the Bosniak Member of the Presidency at the time, Haris Silajdžić, stated during his visit to Washington, D. C. that there is only one language in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that it goes by three names. His statement created negative reactions from Croat political parties and, at the time, Prime Minister of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik. Komšić replied to Silajdžić that he is not the one who will decide how many languages are being spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to a study conducted by the National Democratic Institute in 2010, Komšić was the most popular politician among the Bosniaks.

Second term (2010–2014)

At the 2010 general election, Komšić won 337,065 votes, 60.6% of total. He was followed by Borjana Krišto, Martin Raguž, Jerko Ivanković-Lijanović, Pero Galić, Mile Kutle and Ferdo Galić.
Komšić's electoral win in 2010 is highly contested by Croat political representatives and generally seen as electoral fraud. Namely, every citizen in the Federation can decide whether to vote for a Bosniak or a Croat representative. However, since Bosniaks make up 70% of Federation's population and Croats only 22%, a candidate running to represent Croats in the Presidency can be effectively elected even without a majority among the Croat community - if enough Bosniak voters decide to vote on a Croat ballot. This happened in 2006 and in 2010, when Komšić, an ethnic Croat, backed by multiethnic Social-Democrat Party, won the elections with very few Croat votes. In 2010, he didn't win in a single municipality that had Croat-majority or plurality; nearly all of these went to Borjana Krišto. Bulk of the votes Komšić received came from predominantly Bosniak areas and he fared quite poorly in Croat municipalities, supported by less than 2,5% of the electorate in a number of municipalities in Western Herzegovina, such as Široki Brijeg, Ljubuški, Čitluk, Posušje and Tomislavgrad, while not being able to gain not even 10% in a number of others. Komšić received over seven thousand votes from the Bosniak-majority municipality Kalesija, where a total of 20 Croats live. Furthermore, total Croat population in whole of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was then estimated around 495,000;
Komšić received 336,961 votes alone, while all other Croat candidates won 230,000 votes altogether. Croats consider him to be an illegitimate representative and generally treat him as a second Bosniak member of the presidency. This raised frustration among Croats, undermined their trust in federal institutions and empowered claims for their own entity or a federal unit.

Return to Presidency; Third term (2018–present)

In the 2018 general election, Komšić was once again elected to the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the Croat member with 52.64% of the votes, 16.5% more than his successor, presidency member Dragan Čović. On 20 July 2019, he, for a record fifth time, became the new Presidency Chairman for the following eight months, succeeding Serb member Milorad Dodik. After eight months, on 20 March 2020, Bosniak member Šefik Džaferović succeeded Komšić as Chairman for, as well, the next eight months.

Orders