Milan Kučan

Milan Kučan became the first President of the independent Republic of Slovenia in 1992. He stood as an independent candidate on the civil list and was elected for a five-year term from among seven other candidates in direct elections with 64 per cent of the votes in the first round. In 1992 the great majority of voters supported his programme of an independent, pro-European, social and democratic Slovenia. Mr Kučan had initially been elected President of the Presidency of Slovenia in 1990 under the former Yugoslav Federation in the country's first multi-party parliamentary elections in Slovenia since 1945.
In November 1997 Milan Kučan stood again as an independent candidate for President on the citizens' list and was elected in the first round against seven opponents, winning 55,54 % of votes. His second five-year presidential term of office began on 23 December 1997.
Milan Kučan embarked on his professional political career in 1964 after graduating from the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. In 1971, he participated in the preparation of the Constitutional amendments, which had a powerful influence on the decentralisation of the former Yugoslav Federation. In 1978, he became president of the then Slovenian Republic Assembly. From 1982 to 1986, he served as a representative of Slovenia in the Yugoslav Federation. Practical experience gained in Belgrade enhanced his judgement of the political processes and the relations among the nations of the Yugoslav federation, where the principle of national equality was being violated and where there was neither the will nor the ability for thorough political and economic changes. On his return to Ljubljana in 1986, when he became president of the League of Communists of Slovenia (ZKS) he declared his commitment to respect political freedoms, human rights and dignity, making thus a considerable contribution to turning the organisation into a reformist, social and democratic political organisation. Two years after his appearance as leader of the reformist wing of the party, the Slovene political spring came into full bloom. Foreign reporters wrote about Slovenia as an island of political freedom of the former political East. By 1989, the first political parties were founded, and the first multi-party elections were held in 1990. Ever since the time of the Slovene political spring, Milan Kucan has been the most popular political personality among Slovenes. This is evident from the results of all the public opinion polls conducted by Slovene research institute, as well as from the regular monthly opinion polls in the Slovene dailies.

Milan Kučan was born on 14 January 1941 in Križevci, a village in the eastern region of Prekmurje - near the Slovenian-Hungarian border. He grew up in a teachers' family within a Protestant environment. When he was three years old, his father, an officer in the resistance movement, was killed by the Nazis. He is married and has two daughters. His daughter Ana took her master's degree in landscape architecture at Harvard in 1992, and her PhD at the University of Ljubljana in 1996. His younger daughter Špela is finishing the studies of ethnology, having already taken a degree in Spanish language.

HONORS AND AWARDS: Knight with the medal of the Order of Pope Pius, Collar of the Order "Pro Merito Melitensi" of Malta, The Grand Cross of Honour of the Republic of Hungary, The Grand Medal of Estonia.

MEMBERSHIP: International Board of Directors of the Shimon Peres Institute for Peace.

POLITICAL CAREER: Youth Association of the former Yugoslav Republic of Slovenia 1964-1967, president of the Youth Association of Slovenia 1968-1969, member of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Slovenia 1969 - 1973, secretary of the Socialist Alliance of Slovenia 1973-1978, President of the Assembly of Slovenia 1978-1982, member of the Commission for Economic Stabilisation of former Yugoslavia (1981-1982), member of the Constitutional Commission of the Assembly of former Yugoslavia (1982 - 1986), representative of Slovenia in the Presidency of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of former Yugoslavia 1982-1986, President of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Slovenia 1986-1990, president of the Presidency of the independent Republic of Slovenia 1990-1992, president of the Republic of Slovenia 1992-1997.