Silvije Degen is a Croatia

Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

n lawyer and politician from Zagreb

Zagreb

Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...

.

Silvije Degen, a native of Zagreb, in 1980s became one of the best known lawyers in Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

. This was due to his impeccable fashion sense and tendency to take high-profile criminal cases, best known being the trial of Andrija Artuković

Andrija Artukovic

Andrija Artuković was a Croatian politician and a member of the Ustaše movement. Artuković was convicted of war crimes committed against minorities in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II...

, whom he defended unsuccessfully.

In the early 1990s Degen entered politics, becoming a leader of the Socialist Party of Croatia

Socialist Party of Croatia

Socialist Party of Croatia is now defunct left-wing political party in Croatia....

. As such, he made a minor upset in the Croatian presidential election, 1992

Croatian presidential election, 1992

Presidential elections were held in Croatia for the first time on 2 August 1992 alongside simultaneous parliamentary elections. The result was a victory for Franjo Tuđman of the Croatian Democratic Union , who received 57.8% of the vote...

, by finishing fifth with 108,979 or 4.07% of the vote.