Bogićević was elected member of the
Presidency of Yugoslavia by a referendum of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 25 June 1989, among five candidates, thus becoming the first democratically elected member of the collective Yugoslav Presidency. In addition, he served as President of Yugoslavia's
Federal Council for the Protection of the Constitutional Order. On 12 March 1991, Bogićević famously defied fellow Presidency members from Serbia on a vote which would have imposed
martial law in
Yugoslavia. Formally, the military leadership proposed raising combat readiness, but the real goal was to introduce military rule in
Slovenia and
Croatia and to overthrow the new political leaderships of
Kiro Gligorov in
Macedonia and of
Alija Izetbegović in his native
Bosnia and Herzegovina. The pro-
Milošević faction, which already controlled the Presidency votes from
Serbia (with
Vojvodina and
Kosovo as separate seats in the Presidency), and Montenegro, counted on his vote as a fellow Serb. Bogićević rejected the proposal, and thus by one vote, the Yugoslav Presidency rejected the imposition of martial law. He reportedly commented on his vote, which historians deemed "fateful": "I am a Serb, but not by profession". His decision was decried by the
Serb Democratic Party, who claimed that Bogićević did not represent the Serbs, and he was deprived of his presidential salary as a punishment. He later started working for the
Social Democratic Party. Together with Macedonian Presidency member
Vasil Tupurkovski, in July 1991, Bogićević mediated negotiations between the
Slovenian government and the
Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) Supreme Command on the release of recruits and the unblocking of barracks during the
Ten-Day War between the
Slovenian Territorial Defence and the JNA. Bogićević spent the
wartime period between 1992 and 1995 in
Sarajevo under siege. ==Post-war career==