Esad Džudžo

Esad Džudžo (Есад Џуџо; born 5 July 1958), who was known until 2014 as Esad Džudžević (Есад Џуџевић), is a Serbian politician from the country's Bosniak community.

He has served in the Serbian and Yugoslavian parliaments, led the Bosniak National Council, and played a prominent role in the local government of Tutin.

Džudžo was for many years the leader of the Bosniak Democratic Party of Sandžak (BDSS), which for most of its existence was closely aligned with Sulejman Ugljanin's Party of Democratic Action of Sandžak (SDA).

Džudžo was born in the village of Mitrova in Tutin, in the Sandžak region of what was then the People's Republic of Serbia in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia.

He graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy in sociology in 1986.

During the 1990s, Serbian and Yugoslavian politics were dominated by the authoritarian rule of Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) leader Slobodan Milošević and his allies.

He was one of the founders of the Bosniak Cultural Society "Revival" on 9 March 1991, founded and became the first director of the Sandžak National Library "Vehbija Hodžić" in 1994, and was chosen as editor of the newspaper Sandžačkih novina in January 1996.

(From 1992 to 2000, Serbia's electoral law stipulated that one-third of parliamentary mandates would be assigned to candidates from successful lists in numerical order, while the remaining two-thirds would be distributed amongst other candidates at the discretion of the sponsoring parties. Džudžo could in theory have been assigned the second mandate, though ultimately he was not.)

Džudžo founded the True Party of Democratic Action (Prava Stranka demokratske akcije, PSDA) on 15 June 1996 in Novi Pazar.

The party soon aligned itself with Ugljanin's List for Sandžak (LZS) coalition, which was dominated by the SDA.

The LZS won a landslide victory in Tutin in the 1996 Serbian local elections with thirty-two out of thirty-five seats, and Džudžo was chosen afterward as president of the municipality's executive committee.

In the 1997 Serbian parliamentary election, Džudžo appeared in the sixth position on the LZS's electoral list for the Kraljevo constituency.

The list won two seats, which were assigned to its two leading candidates, Fevzija Murić and Šemsudin Kučević.

The True Party of Democratic Action renamed itself as the Bosniak Democratic Party of Sandžak on 20 April 1998, due to its opposition to the policies of the Party of Democratic Action of Bosnia and Herzegovina pertaining to Sandžak and the Bosniak community of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).

Džudžo said at the time that the BDSS would fight for democracy in Yugoslavia, seek to resolve the status of the Sandžak as a modern European region, and affirm the Bosniak community's national rights in the Sandžak.

In May 1999, Džudžo received a six-month prison sentence for illegal payments to a lawyer in a matter relating to a court case against him.

The Bosnian News Agency BH Press described the sentence as politically motivated and as taking place in the context of ongoing state persecution of the Bosniak community.

The conviction would presumably have been appealed, and there is no indication that Džudžo served the sentence.

In early 2000, a broad multi-party alliance called the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) was established to challenge Milošević's rule.

The List for Sandžak did not join the DOS, due in part to divisions among the Bosniak parties of the Sandžak, but it cooperated with the alliance in the 2000 Yugoslavian general election, in which Milošević fell from power after being defeated by DOS candidate Vojislav Koštunica in the presidential contest.

The 2000 Yugoslavian election saw the first and only direct elections for the Chamber of Republics, the upper house of the Yugoslavian parliament.

As part of the cooperation pact between the DOS and the LZS, Džudžo was given the nineteenth position out of twenty on the DOS's electoral list for Serbia.

The list won ten of the twenty seats, and he was assigned a mandate when the assembly convened on 24 September 2000.

(For this election, half of the assembly mandates were awarded in numerical order with the other half assigned at the discretion of the sponsoring parties or coalitions. Via a prior arrangement with the LZS, Džudžo was given one of the DOS's "optional" mandates.)

The List for Sandžak also won a second consecutive landslide victory in Tutin for the 2000 Serbian local elections, taking thirty-four out of thirty-seven seats.

Džudžo continued serving as chair of the municipal government's executive committee for the four-year term that followed.

During this period, Džudžo was an advocate for decentralization within the constitutional framework of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

He supported calls for greater autonomy in Vojvodina and Šumadija and argued that Bosniaks were increasingly prepared to support the unity of Yugoslavia along with the unity of the Sandžak and the Bosniak people.

In October 2001, he encouraged Bosniaks in Kosovo to participate in the 2001 Kosovan parliamentary election.

In June 2002, Yugoslavian president Vojislav Koštunica appointed Džudžo to a constitutional commission drafting the charter of the new State Union of Serbia and Montenegro (successor to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia).

At a press conference after his appointment, Džudžo called for the commission to address the issue of minority communities via accepted European standards, which would include setting guidelines for regionalization.

As a member of the committee, he called for Bosniaks to be recognized as a constituent nation of Serbia and Montenegro and proposed that an assembly of peoples and regions become part of the future state union's parliament.

Mujo Muković of the Sandžak Democratic Party (SDP), the only other commission member from the Sandžak, had a poor relationship with Džudžo and accused him of making "unrealistic" requests that did not take into account the border dividing the Sandžak region between Serbia and Montenegro.

Džudžo ultimately resigned from the commission in November 2002 when it refused to accept some of his proposals; he said that he could not agree to "the Sandžak region that stretches on both sides of the [Serbia-Montenegro] border being divided."

In January 2003, he said that the completed charter did not recognize the legitimate rights of national minorities and created a legal framework for the division of its two constituent republics.

The Yugoslavian Chamber of Republics was abolished when the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro formally came into being on 4 February 2003, and Džudžo's parliamentary term came to an end.

He criticized the fact that Bosniaks had no representatives in the new unicameral parliament of the state union.

The Bosniak National Council was established in September 2003 as a successor to the Bosniak National Council of Sandžak; unlike its predecessor, it was formally recognized by state authorities as the representative body of Bosniaks in Serbia and Montenegro.

Ugljanin was chosen as the council's first president, and Džudžo became the president of its executive committee.

In November 2003, Džudžo accused Montenegrin authorities of pressuring Bosniaks to declare their first language as Montenegrin rather than Bosnian.