Slaven Letica

Slaven Letica (28 June 1947 – 25 October 2020) was a Croatian author, economist, commentator and politician.

Biography A native of Podgora, Letica graduated from the University of Zagreb Faculty of Economics in 1971. Letica and Tuđman parted ways in March 1991 due to disagreement about Croatian politics towards Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Political career In the 2000 Croatian presidential election, Letica ran as an independent candidate. Although he finished fourth, the relatively high percentage of votes he won (4.14%) made him desirable to the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP), a right-wing party in desperate need to tone down its negative far-right image. Letica, with his reputation of a refined urbanite and European intellectual, served this purpose very well and on the 2003 Croatian parliamentary election, as a candidate on HSP's list, won a seat in the Sabor (Croatian Parliament).

He also associated at one point with the Croatian True Revival, a one-time political project of Miroslav Tuđman and Nenad Ivanković that failed to gain major traction in Croatian politics.

The HSP nevertheless used Letica again as their candidate in the 2005 Croatian presidential election. When Letica won fewer votes than in 2000, 2.59%, he accused the HSP of not supporting him enough. He quit the party midway through his term and remained in the Sabor until January 2008 as an independent.

In the 2007 Croatian parliamentary election, his independent list for the Zagreb region failed to gain the five percent of the vote needed to enter the Parliament.

Personal life Letica was married to Gordana Cerjan-Letica, a sociologist and a professor at the School of Dental Medicine, University of Zagreb. They had two sons, Bartol (born in 1976) and Frane (born in 1982).

Works Selected books: Zdravstvo u Hrvatskoj: razvoj, stanje i perspektive (1981) Kriza i zdravstvo (1984) Zdravstvena politika u doba krize (1984) Intelektualac i kriza (1984) Četvrta Jugoslavija (1989) Obećana zemlja (1992) Divlje misli (1993) The Road from Paradise (1993, co-author) Habits of the Balkan Heart (1993, co-author) Postmoderna i genocid u Bosni i Hercegovini (1997, co-author) Političko pleme (1999) Strašni sud (2002) Medicinska sociologija (2003, co-author)