Ciril Ribičič

Who is Ciril Ribičič?

Ciril Ribičič is a Slovenian jurist, politician and author. Since 2000, he has served as member of the Constitutional Court of Slovenia.

He was born in Ljubljana, then part of the People's Republic of Slovenia in former Yugoslavia. His father was Mitja Ribičič, one of the most influential officials of the Yugoslav Secret Police in Slovenia. He studied law at the University of Ljubljana. In the late 1970s and 1980s, he published several treatises in the field of constitutional law in the condition of Yugoslav self-management socialism.

In the late 1980s, he emerged as one of the foremost members of the reformist leadership in the League of Communists of Slovenia, together with Milan Kučan. He rose to prominence as the chairman of the Slovene delegation at the 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, held in Belgrade in January 1990. The congress ended in the dissolution of the Yugoslav Communist Party, after the Slovene delegation decided to withdraw in protest against the domination of Serbian Communists who had embraced Serbian nationalism.

In 1990, the League of Communists of Slovenia introduced democratic reforms and renamed itself to Party of Democratic Renewal. Ribičič was elected as its first president. In April 1990, the party lost the elections to the Democratic Opposition of Slovenia, and Ribičič became one of the two main leaders of the Slovenian left wing opposition. He was re-elected to the Slovenian National Assembly in 1992, and was one of the architects of the so-called grand coalition, formed by the Liberal Democratic Party, the Slovene Christian Democrats, the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia and his own Party of Democratic Reforms. Although this coalition, led by the Liberal Democrat Janez Drnovšek, gradually disintegrated between 1994 and 1996, it prevented the political isolation of the former Communists and ensured their return to power.