Josip Leko Explained

Josip Leko
Office1:Judge of the Constitutional Court of Croatia
Term Start1:7 June 2016
Office2:Speaker of the Croatian Parliament
Term Start2:30 September 2012
Term End2:28 December 2015
Predecessor2:Boris Šprem
Successor2:Željko Reiner
Term Start3:22 December 2011
Term End3:12 October 2012
Predecessor3:Vladimir Šeks
Successor3:Peđa Grbin
Birth Date:19 September 1948
Birth Place:Plavna, PR Serbia, FPR Yugoslavia
Party:SDP
Alma Mater:University of Zagreb

Josip Leko (born 19 September 1948) is a Croatian politician who served as Speaker of the Croatian Parliament from 2012 to 2015.

Biography

He was born in 1948 in Plavna village (Bač municipality) in Bačka, Serbia (then Yugoslavia) to a Croatian family from Ledinac near Grude in western Herzegovina. When he was one and a half years old the family returned to Herzegovina.

He finished high school in Herzegovina and went to university in Zagreb, Croatia where he got a major in law.

On 19 June 2012 he became a president of the Executive Council of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia.[1]

When in 2013 he became the Speaker of the Parliament he became the first Croat from Herzegovina to hold such a high position in Croatian politics.

Career

Leko was deputy speaker from 23 December 2011 to 30 September 2012, when he succeeded Boris Šprem, who died in office, as interim speaker. He had already been acting as speaker during Šprem's absence due to cancer treatment in Houston, Texas.He was proposed as the permanent Speaker of the Parliament by the ruling coalition and was confirmed on 10 October 2012, by a vote of 123 parliamentarians out of 151.[2]

On 3 June 2016, Croatian Parliament appointed him as a justice of the Constitutional Court of Croatia and he took his position on 7 June.[3]

Notes and References

  1. ba/VLM: Josip Leko izabran za šefa Glavnog odbora SDP-a, 16. lipnja 2012.
  2. Web site: Speaker of Parliament. sabor.hr. Croatian Parliament. 10 October 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20151124120120/http://www.sabor.hr/Default.aspx?art=50316. 24 November 2015. dead.
  3. Web site: Izbjegnuta ustavna kriza: Izabrano 10 sudaca Ustavnog suda. Index.hr. 6 October 2017.