Ljubiša Jovašević (; born 20 December 1953) is šaJovaševića Serbian medical doctor and politician. He was a parliamentarian in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the successor State Union of Serbia and Montenegro from 2000 to 2006 and has served as the mayor of Kraljevo on two occasions. A member of the Democratic Party of Serbia (Demokratska stranka Srbije, DSS) for many years, he left the party in 2007 to form the Movement for Kraljevo (Pokret za Kraljevo). From 2010 to 2018, he was the de facto leader of the Movement of United Local Self-Governments (Pokret ujedinjenih lokalnih samouprava, PULS).
Early life and private career
Jovašević was born in Sarajevo, in what was then the People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in 1978 and worked in Reading, United Kingdom, as part of his internship. He later specialized at the clinic for orthopedic surgery and traumatology at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Medicine, completed post-graduate studies in London, and in 1988 became the leader of the on-call trauma group at the Emergency Center in Belgrade. He earned his Ph.D in 1992; he has taught at the University of Priština in Leposavić and has published in his field.
Politician
Early years
Jovašević was a founding member of the Democratic Party (Demokratska stranka, DS) in 1990. When the party split in 1992, he joined the breakaway Democratic Party of Serbia. He appeared in the eighth position on the DSS's electoral list for the Kragujevac division in the 1993 Serbian parliamentary election; the list won two seats, and he did not receive a mandate. (From 1992 to 2000, Serbia's electoral law stipulated that one-third of parliamentary mandates would be assigned to candidates on successful lists in numerical order, while the remaining two-thirds would be distributed amongst other candidates at the discretion of sponsoring parties or coalitions. Jovašević could theoretically have been awarded a mandate despite his list position, but he was not.)
Federal representative and first term as mayor
In 2000, the DSS joined the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (Demokratska opozicija Srbije, DOS), a broad and ideologically diverse coalition of parties opposed to the rule of Slobodan Milošević and his allies. DOS candidate Vojislav Koštunica defeated Milošević in the 2000 Yugoslavian presidential election, a watershed moment in Serbian and Yugoslavian politics. In the concurrent Yugoslavian parliamentary election, Jovašević appeared in the lead position on the DOS's list for the Kraljevo division and was elected when the list won two of three available seats. The DOS afterward formed a coalition government with the Socialist People's Party of Montenegro (Socijalistička narodna partija Crne Gore, SNP), and Jovašević initially served as a supporter of the administration.
Jovašević was also elected to the Kraljevo municipal assembly in the 2000 Serbian local elections, which took place at the same time the federal election. The DOS won a majority victory, and Jovašević was chosen as president of the assembly, a position that was at the time equivalent to mayor. He had little practical authority in this role, however, as most important municipal positions were held by members of the DS, the other major party in the DOS coalition.
The DSS withdrew support from Serbia's DOS government in 2001 and left the alliance entirely in 2002. In July 2002, Jovašević accused recently dismissed military official Nebojša Pavković of misusing a multi-million dollar fund for military hospitals and of having connections to a cigarette smuggling ring. Pavković, who denied the accusation and initiated legal charges against Jovašević, had been considered as a supporter of DS leader Zoran Đinđić, and the accusations contributed to ongoing divisions between the DS and DSS.