Kiro Gligorov (3 May 1919 – 1 January 2012) was President of Macedonia from 27 January 1991 to 19 November 1999, succeeding Vladimir Mitkov and preceding Boris Trajkovski.
Biography[]
Kiro Gligorov was born in Stip, Kingdom of Serbia in 1919, and he worked as a lawyer during the Bulgarian occupation of Macedonia during World War II. He later rose in the ranks of the League of Communists of Macedonia, serving as Finance Minister of Yugoslavia from 1962 to 1967 and as President of SR Macedonia in 1991. Upon Macedonia's independence from SFR Yugoslavia, Gligorov became President of Macedonia as an independent politician, and he became a Social Democratic Union of Macedonia politician. On 3 October 1995, he was wounded during a car bomb assassination attempt, being permanently blinded in one eye. The mafia-linked Bulgarian Multigroup was suspected of involvement in the attempt, as was the Yugoslav intelligence services. Gligorov left office in 1999, and he died in 2012.