Pero Čingrija

Pero Čingrija (August 24, 1837, Dubrovnik – July 13, 1921, Dubrovnik) was a Croatian politician. Along with Frano Supilo, he was certainly the greatest and most successful Dubrovnik and Dalmatian politician from the early 1860s until the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy. Without a doubt, he was the longest-serving and most popular mayor in Dubrovnik's history. He was the mayor of Dubrovnik from 1878 to 1882, and continuously from 1899 to 1911. He was highly esteemed as a civic intellectual, a lawyer, and above all as a devoted member and leader of the People's Party. Pero's son Melko was also a politician.

After the deaths of Miho Klaić (1896) and Gajo Bulat (1900), he became the leader of the People's Party at the level of Dalmatia. He advocated the cooperation of Dubrovnik populists and moderate right-wingers, thus strongly influencing the right-wing leader Frano Supilo, which in the late 1890s formed a strong Croatian (populist-right-wing) front in the City, which in 1899 defeated the Serbian-Autonomous Coalition forever. He transferred the fruits of Dubrovnik's cooperation to the level of Dalmatia when, on April 26, 1905, it was through his efforts that Dalmatian populists and moderate rightists merged into the Croatian Party, of which he immediately became president. However, when the pro-Austrian mood prevailed in the leadership of the Dalmatian Croatian Party, and when the austrophile Vicko Mihaljević was elected its president on September 14, 1908, under Čingrija's influence, Dubrovnik and Korčula representatives resigned, and only two days later , already on September 20, in Dubrovnik, founded the Independent Organization of the Croatian Party headed by Čingrija. He was one of the founders of the policy of the new course. As president of the Croatian Club in the Dalmatian Parliament in early October 1905, he chaired a conference in Rijeka at which the Rijeka resolution was adopted, marking the victory of the new course policy, and then a member of the Croatian committee to negotiate with the Hungarian opposition on the implementation of the Rijeka resolution.