Sara Korunic (born 1965) is a retired Kresimirian politician and architect who served as a Senator for District I (Sinj) from 2002 to 2022. A member of Blue Dawn, she was widely recognized as the leader of the party’s “Liberal Wing,” advocating for civil liberties and privacy rights from within the establishment.
The daughter of the renowned architect and former Senator Vladi Korunic, Sara continued her father’s political legacy of “Urban Liberalism.” During her twenty-year tenure, she frequently clashed with the increasingly authoritarian leadership of Ari Stov. She is noted for being the sole Blue Dawn senator to vote against the Digital Sovereignty Act in 2015. Following her retirement in 2022, she has become an active supporter of the civil rights charity Republic For All.
Early Life and Career
Sara Korunic was born in 1965 in the “Old Town” of Sinj. She is the only child of Vladi Korunic, a liberal Blue Dawn senator who represented the capital from 1942 to 1972 and founded the environmental architecture firm Fire Away. Raised in a household that functioned as a salon for the capital’s intelligentsia, she was exposed to political debate from a young age.
She attended Sinj University, graduating with a degree in Architecture in 1988. Like her father, she worked in urban planning, advocating for the preservation of historic green spaces against the brutalist expansion projects of GradnjaMC.
Political Career
The Vasilis Era (2002–2013)
Korunic entered national politics in the 2002 election. Blue Dawn, seeking to modernize its image under Stoyan Vasilis, recruited her to appeal to the educated, urban middle class of Sinj. She ran alongside the diplomat Magdalena Zuvic. While Zuvic represented the party’s conservative establishment, Korunic represented its progressive future. She won the seat comfortably.
During the Vasilis administration, Korunic focused on urban infrastructure and arts funding. She was a key supporter of the 2004 Transit Act, arguing that integrating the rural north with the capital was a matter of social equity.
The Stov Era and Dissent (2013–2022)
The election of Ari Stov as party leader in 2013 marked a turning point in Korunic’s career. While she initially supported Stov’s modernization rhetoric, she quickly became alarmed by his “Technocratic Statism” and his close ties to the surveillance firm YakaSys.
The Digital Sovereignty Act (2015)
In early 2015, the Stov government proposed the Digital Sovereignty Act, which mandated the use of the KresiX operating system for all citizens. Korunic was the most vocal critic of the bill within the government caucus. She argued that state-mandated software created a “single point of failure for liberty.”
When the bill came to a vote, Korunic broke the party whip. She was the only Blue Dawn senator to vote Against the measure, joining the Civic Renewal Front and Northern Power in opposition. Although the bill passed, her rebellion was a significant embarrassment for Stov.
The Digital Vigilance Act (2015)
Later that year, the government introduced the 2015 State Security Amendment (Digital Vigilance Act), which legalized warrantless data harvesting. Korunic spoke out against the bill in committee, calling it “a betrayal of the privacy my father fought to protect during the Iron Era.”
However, facing threats of expulsion from the party and intense pressure from the Council for Internal Affairs, she was eventually “persuaded” by Ari Stov to toe the line. She voted In Favor of the act, though witnesses described her as visibly distressed during the roll call. She later stated in a private interview that she believed staying in the party to moderate it was better than being exiled.
Retirement and Activism
In the run-up to the 2022 election, Korunic announced she would not seek a third term. In her retirement statement, she issued a thinly veiled critique of the Stov administration, stating that she could no longer serve a leadership that was “steering the Republic toward a digital authoritarianism that forgets the human soul.”
Her decision not to run weakened the Blue Dawn ticket in District I. Without her personal popularity among liberals, the party failed to retain her seat, which was captured by Adnan Sitar of the CRF.
Republic For All
Since leaving the Assembly, Korunic has publicly aligned herself with the civil rights movement. She has been frequently seen at fundraising events for Republic For All, the legal charity founded by CRF Senator Drazen Horvat. Although she has not formally joined the opposition party, her support for Horvat’s legal battles against the Media Licensing Authority is seen as a continuation of her father’s liberal legacy.