Who Is Vojislav Koštunica

Vojislav Koštunica (born in Belgrade on 24 March 1944) is a Serbian lawyer, former university lecturer and politician who went down in history as the man who defeated Slobodan Milošević in the 2000 federal presidential election. He was the last president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (2000–2003) and later served as Prime Minister of Serbia from 2004 to 2008. He is the founder of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and a long-time leader of the conservative, nationally oriented part of the Serbian political scene.

Before he became a public figure known around the world, Koštunica was recognised as a constitutional lawyer and an intellectual opposed to the communist system. In 1974 he lost his job at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade because of his political views, after which he spent decades working in research institutes, writing about political pluralism and taking part in the defence of freedom of thought.

His political path was marked by major turning points: the founding of the Democratic Party in 1989, his departure from it and the creation of the DSS in 1992, the electoral victory in 2000, the conflict with Zoran Đinđić, two terms as head of the Serbian government and his withdrawal from politics in 2014. This article follows the life and career of Vojislav Koštunica on the basis of verified sources, in a neutral tone and without personal judgments.

Origins and Early Life

Vojislav Koštunica was born in Belgrade on 24 March 1944, while the country was under occupation during the Second World War. Most encyclopaedic sources give this date, while one newspaper profile from 1996 mentions 24 April, so sources differ on this detail.

He came from a family with a legal tradition. According to American sources, he was the only child of a judge of the Supreme Court of Yugoslavia, who was removed from that post when the communists took power after the war. His paternal family traces its origins to Jovan Damjanović from the village of Koštunići and, according to media reports, that ancestor, known by the nickname Koštunica, took part in the Saint Andrew’s Assembly of 1858.

He grew up in Belgrade, where he completed primary school and secondary school. His father’s fate is often mentioned in biographies because Koštunica himself later lost his professional position at the university for political reasons.

Education

Koštunica enrolled at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law and graduated in 1966. He earned his master’s degree in 1970 and his doctorate in 1974 with a thesis titled “Institutionalised Opposition in the Political System of Capitalism”. Britannica gives 1976 as the year of the doctorate, so sources differ on this point, but most Serbian sources refer to 1974.

The dissertation was later published as the book “Politički sistem kapitalizma i opozicija”. Even at that early stage he showed an interest in the questions that would shape his entire body of work: the role of the opposition, the multiparty system and the limits of state power. According to the official profile published by the Serbian government, he speaks English.

Academic Career and Dismissal from the Faculty of Law

In 1970 Koštunica was elected assistant at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, where he worked until 1974. That year he left the faculty in the midst of political persecution at the university. Sources describe the trigger differently: some cite criticism of the constitutional changes carried out by the regime of Josip Broz Tito, others cite the signing of a petition for the release of Professor Mihajlo Đurić, who had been imprisoned for criticising those changes.

Koštunica never returned to the faculty. An offer to return came in the late 1980s, but he declined it, and sources differ on whether this was in 1987 or 1989. According to accounts from that time, he did not want to be reinstated by the same people who had dismissed him.

After leaving the faculty he found work at the Institute of Social Sciences and then at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. According to the Institute, he was acting director of the Centre for Philosophy and Social Theory from 1988 to 1990 and then its director until 1991. He was also a member of the editorial boards and editor-in-chief of several scholarly journals, including “Arhiv za pravne i društvene nauke”, “Filozofske studije”, “Filozofija i društvo” and “Teorija”. He is a member of the Serbian PEN Centre.

In 1981 he translated “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of 18th-century American essays on constitutional design, into Serbo-Croatian. According to American sources, it was the first translation of the work into the Serbian language.

The Fight for Freedom of Thought and Scholarly Work

In the 1980s Koštunica became involved in the protection of human rights, above all in the Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Thought and Expression. In that circle of intellectuals, who opposed the one-party system, were also the lawyer Kosta Čavoški and Leon Kojen, with whom he would later found a political party.

With Kosta Čavoški he wrote the monograph “Stranački pluralizam ili monizam” (1983), a legal study of the advantages of multiparty democracy over a one-party system. With Ratko Marković he published the book “Samoupravno odlučivanje u društvenim delatnostima” (1978). His works on constitutional law and political philosophy made him well known in professional circles long before he became a politician.

Entering Politics

Founding the Democratic Party

In 1989 Koštunica was one of the thirteen founders of the Democratic Party (DS), together with Zoran Đinđić and other intellectuals from the opposition. By his own account, talks about the party began in a circle of friends that included Kosta Čavoški and Leon Kojen. In the DS he served as vice-president of the Main Board from 1990 until mid-1992.

From 1990 to 1997 he was a member of the Serbian National Assembly. In that period he was already prominent as a critic of the rule of Slobodan Milošević, but also as a politician who put national questions first.

Founding the Democratic Party of Serbia

Over time two different views on programme and tactics developed within the Democratic Party, especially after the demonstrations of March 1991. Koštunica later explained that there were two programmes inside one party, and that such a party could not last long. With part of the membership he left the DS in the summer of 1992 and founded the Democratic Party of Serbia. The founding assembly was held on 26 July 1992, and Koštunica was elected its first president.

The DSS ran in the December 1992 elections as part of the DEPOS coalition and won 18 seats, but it left the coalition in mid-1993. At the following elections it ran independently and won seven seats. The party was then regarded as a small but consistent opposition force with a clear legal and national profile.

Positions in the 1990s

Throughout the 1990s Koštunica opposed Milošević’s policies, but he also criticised international solutions that he considered harmful to Serbian interests. According to Hungarian sources from 2000, he opposed the Dayton Agreement of 1995. Britannica states that he also condemned the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999.

Unlike many opposition figures, Koštunica had never been part of the government, so in public he was seen as a politician with a “clean past”. That quality, together with his relative obscurity abroad, proved to be an advantage when the opposition chose a joint candidate.

The 2000 Presidential Election and the Fifth of October

In the summer of 2000 the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), a coalition of 18 parties, chose Vojislav Koštunica as its joint candidate for the federal presidential election. Constitutional changes from July 2000 had introduced direct election of the president of FR Yugoslavia, and Milošević was counting on being re-elected. The coalition included both Koštunica’s DSS and Đinđić’s DS, which meant that Koštunica was working with former allies from whom he had parted eight years earlier.

The election was held on 24 September 2000. The Federal Election Commission announced that Koštunica had won about 49 per cent of the vote, which meant that a second round was needed. DOS rejected this and claimed that its candidate had won in the first round. According to the final results established by the Commission after a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, Koštunica received 2,470,304 votes (50.24 per cent) and Milošević 1,826,799 votes (37.15 per cent).

A period of mass protests and strikes followed, including the strike of miners in the Kolubara basin. The turning point came on 5 October 2000, when hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Belgrade in front of the Federal Assembly. In the evening Koštunica addressed the citizens from the terrace of the Belgrade City Assembly. Milošević conceded defeat the next day, and on 7 October 2000 Koštunica took office as president of FR Yugoslavia.

The events of October 2000 are known as the Fifth of October and are regarded as one of the most important days in recent Serbian history. Regardless of differing interpretations of the roles of individual actors, Koštunica remained the symbol of the electoral victory that led to the lifting of international sanctions against the country.

President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Koštunica led the federation from October 2000 until February 2003, when FR Yugoslavia was replaced by the state union of Serbia and Montenegro and his office was abolished. The federal governments were headed by Zoran Žižić and, from July 2001, by Dragiša Pešić, while in Serbia the government was led by Zoran Đinđić.

Immediately after taking office, Koštunica rejected vindictive measures against Milošević and his supporters, stressing the rule of law. Some supported this approach, while others felt that it slowed the reckoning with the legacy of the previous regime.

Foreign commentators at the time noted that Koštunica combined democratic rhetoric with a national programme. Croatian, French and German newspapers warned that his nationalism could be as deep as Milošević’s, while Western governments saw him as a legitimate representative of change in Serbia.

The Conflict with Zoran Đinđić and the Extradition of Slobodan Milošević

Although Koštunica and Đinđić had jointly led the opposition to Milošević, their old rivalry quickly resurfaced. Britannica describes the relationship as a struggle for power, and their differences concerned methods: Đinđić was seen as a pragmatic reformer, while Koštunica insisted on legality and the preservation of state institutions.

The biggest conflict was caused by the extradition of Slobodan Milošević to the Hague Tribunal. Milošević was arrested on 1 April 2001, and on Vidovdan, 28 June 2001, the Serbian government handed him over to the Tribunal by decree, bypassing the federal institutions. Koštunica publicly declared the extradition illegal and unconstitutional, claiming that he had not been informed of the imminent transfer. Đinđić, for his part, claimed that Koštunica knew or should have known.

Federal Prime Minister Zoran Žižić resigned, and the DSS left the governing coalition in the parliaments of Serbia and Yugoslavia. Relations within DOS worsened further after the murder of Momčilo Gavrilović and over the question of stripping the DSS of its parliamentary seats. In a 2002 report the International Crisis Group assessed the role of the DSS critically, while Koštunica’s supporters stressed that he was defending the constitutional order.

Zoran Đinđić was assassinated on 12 March 2003, only a few weeks after Koštunica’s term as federal president had ended.

Return to Power: The Road to the Prime Ministership

During 2002 Koštunica ran for president of Serbia. In the first round he won the most votes, but in the second round against Miroljub Labus turnout was below the required 50 per cent, so the election was declared invalid. The repeat election in December of that year also failed because of low turnout. His opponent in that round was Vojislav Šešelj.

At the parliamentary elections in December 2003 the DSS won 17.7 per cent of the vote, or 53 seats. After lengthy negotiations Koštunica formed a minority government made up of the DSS, Mlađan Dinkić’s G17 Plus, Vuk Drašković’s SPO and Velimir Ilić’s New Serbia. The government was supported in parliament by the Socialist Party of Serbia. It was formed on 3 March 2004, and Koštunica succeeded Zoran Živković as head of government.

Prime Minister of Serbia from 2004 to 2008

Vojislav Koštunica served as Prime Minister of Serbia from 4 March 2004 to 7 July 2008. His term went through several key issues that defined modern Serbian politics.

Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal

As prime minister, Koštunica remained critical of the Hague Tribunal. In his time cooperation relied largely on voluntary surrenders of indictees, and chief prosecutor Karla del Ponte (Carla Del Ponte) claimed in her reports that the government was unwilling to make arrests. In October 2004 Koštunica acknowledged that Belgrade’s cooperation would be judged by its readiness to arrest Ratko Mladić.

From December 2004 a series of voluntary surrenders of indictees from Serbia and Republika Srpska followed. According to the National Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal in April 2008, Serbia had by then handed over 42 of the 46 people requested, while Mladić, Radovan Karadžić, Goran Hadžić and Stojan Župljanin remained at large. Karadžić was arrested in July 2008, after Koštunica had left office.

Montenegrin Independence and Serbia’s New Constitution

Montenegro held an independence referendum on 21 May 2006, and the state union of Serbia and Montenegro ceased to exist in June of that year. Koštunica remained at the head of the Serbian government, and Serbia thereby became an independent state.

The Serbian Assembly adopted the draft of the new Constitution on 30 September 2006, and it was confirmed in a referendum on 28 and 29 October 2006. Turnout was 54.91 per cent, and 3,521,724 voters backed the Constitution, or 53.04 per cent of all registered voters. Koštunica was one of the key figures in adopting the first constitution of independent Serbia after the break-up of the state union. The preamble states that Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of Serbia’s territory, which Koštunica highlighted as the most important state goal.

Kosovo, the Ahtisaari Plan and Military Neutrality

The biggest issue of his term was the status of Kosovo. UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari proposed “supervised independence” for the province in 2007. Koštunica rejected the plan as unacceptable. In the talks in Vienna he stressed that European history offered no precedent for taking about fifteen per cent of a state’s territory, citing the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act and Security Council Resolution 1244. After the January 2007 elections he also argued that he had no mandate to discuss Kosovo until a new government was formed.

On 26 December 2007 the Serbian Assembly adopted the Resolution on the Protection of Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity and Constitutional Order of the Republic of Serbia, with 220 deputies voting in favour. It proclaimed Serbia’s military neutrality with respect to existing military alliances pending a possible referendum, with a justification that referred to NATO’s role in the 1999 bombing and in the Ahtisaari plan. That decision has remained in force in the following decades.

Collapse of the Coalition and Resignation

After the elections of 21 January 2007, Koštunica reached an agreement on 15 May 2007 to form a fragile coalition government with Boris Tadić’s Democratic Party, which received 13 of the 25 ministerial posts. The government worked with the support of G17 Plus.

The coalition fell apart in early 2008 because of differences over relations with the European Union and over Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence on 17 February 2008. On 8 March 2008 Koštunica called new elections for 11 May. After the elections the attempt to form a government failed, the DSS moved into opposition, and Koštunica’s term ended on 7 July 2008.

Decline in Popularity and Departure from Politics

After leaving office, Koštunica remained at the head of the DSS, but the party gradually lost support. In the 2012 presidential election he won about 7.4 per cent of the vote, finishing behind Tomislav Nikolić, Boris Tadić and Ivica Dačić.

In the parliamentary elections of March 2014 the DSS failed to pass the threshold and for the first time in its history remained outside parliament. Koštunica resigned as party president, and in October 2014 he left the party altogether, explaining that it had abandoned the policy of neutrality. According to encyclopaedic sources, in November 2014 he was among the founders of the right-wing, eurosceptic Statehood Movement of Serbia. Since then he has withdrawn from public life.

Published Works

Alongside his political career, Koštunica is the author of several books on law and politics:

• Politički sistem kapitalizma i opozicija (1977)
• Samoupravno odlučivanje u društvenim delatnostima (1978, with Ratko Marković)
• Stranački pluralizam ili monizam (1983, with Kosta Čavoški)
• Ugrožena sloboda (2002)
• Odbrana Kosova (2008)
• Zašto Srbija, a ne Evropska unija (2012)

Personal Life

Vojislav Koštunica is a member of the Serbian Orthodox Church. For many years he was married to Zorica Radović, a professor of legal sciences. According to media reports, the marriage lasted about 28 years, and she died in April 2015.

According to the same sources, Koštunica married again in 2018. Since withdrawing from politics he has lived quietly in Belgrade, away from the public eye. Information about his family and any children is not publicly known and is therefore not included in this article.

Interesting Facts

• He translated “The Federalist Papers” in 1981, which is regarded as the first translation of the work into Serbian.
• According to American sources, his father was removed from his post as a judge after the war, and in 1974 he met a similar fate at the university.
• Hungarian media wrote in 2000 that his favourite car was a “Yugo” that was almost ten years old.
• According to Vreme, one of his election promises in 2000 was that Serbia would become a “boring country”.
• According to media reports, he awarded 3,105 decorations in three years in office, a record among Serbian presidents.

Legacy and Influence

Assessments of Vojislav Koštunica differ depending on who is making them. Supporters highlight him as the politician who made a peaceful change of regime possible in 2000, defended the constitutional order and insisted on preserving the territorial integrity of Serbia. His name is linked to the 2006 Constitution and the 2007 Resolution on Military Neutrality, both of which remain part of political debates today.

Critics, including international organisations and part of the domestic public, fault him for slowing reforms, for a slow approach to the Hague Tribunal and for the conflict with Zoran Đinđić. Historians and analysts agree that his victory in 2000 was a turning point, but they differ in their assessment of his contribution in the years that followed.

Koštunica’s party, the DSS, later changed its name and leadership but remained present on the political scene as a conservative, nationally oriented force. Koštunica himself remains a figure whose actions are still regularly cited in debates on Kosovo, European integration and Serbia’s relations with NATO.

Biography – Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Vojislav Koštunica?

Vojislav Koštunica is a Serbian lawyer and politician, the last president of FR Yugoslavia (2000–2003) and Prime Minister of Serbia from 2004 to 2008. He is the founder of the Democratic Party of Serbia.

When and where was Vojislav Koštunica born?

He was born on 24 March 1944 in Belgrade. A 1996 profile gives 24 April, but most sources confirm March.

What offices did Vojislav Koštunica hold?

He was president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 2000 to 2003, a member of the Serbian National Assembly from 1990 to 1997 and Prime Minister of Serbia from March 2004 to July 2008.

How did Koštunica defeat Slobodan Milošević?

As the candidate of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia he won about 50.24 per cent of the vote on 24 September 2000 according to the final report, against 37.15 per cent for Milošević. Mass protests on 5 October forced the authorities to accept the results.

Why did Koštunica leave the Faculty of Law?

He was dismissed in 1974 during a wave of political persecution at the university. Sources say the reason was either criticism of constitutional changes or support for Professor Mihajlo Đurić.

What is the Democratic Party of Serbia and who founded it?

The DSS is a party that Koštunica founded in 1992 after leaving the Democratic Party. Its founding assembly was held on 26 July 1992, and he led it until 2014.

What was Koštunica’s position on Kosovo?

He believed that Kosovo must remain part of Serbia. He rejected the Ahtisaari plan, advocated including that provision in the preamble of the 2006 Constitution and was among the main actors behind the 2007 Resolution on military neutrality.

Which books did Vojislav Koštunica write?

He is the author of “Politički sistem kapitalizma i opozicija”, “Stranački pluralizam ili monizam”, “Ugrožena sloboda”, “Odbrana Kosova” and “Zašto Srbija, a ne Evropska unija”, and co-author of “Samoupravno odlučivanje u društvenim delatnostima”.

Is Vojislav Koštunica still in politics?

He withdrew from active politics in 2014, after the DSS failed at the elections. Since then he has lived a quiet life and rarely speaks publicly.

Who was Vojislav Koštunica married to?

According to media reports, he was married to Zorica Radović, a professor of legal sciences, who died in 2015. The same sources say he married again in 2018.

Conclusion

Vojislav Koštunica is a lawyer and politician whose name is permanently tied to the Fifth of October 2000 and the end of Milošević’s rule. From academic dissident, through party founder, to head of state and prime minister, he travelled a path marked by consistency on legal and national questions, but also by conflicts with former allies. His legacy remains the subject of differing assessments, and the questions he raised, above all those of Kosovo and neutrality, are still among the most important topics in Serbian politics today.