Ivo Krstelj

Ivo Krstelj, also Ivan Krstelj was a Croatian and Yugoslavian politician and lawyer.

Biography

Krstelj graduated law and obtained doctoral degree from the University of Vienna in 1894. Subsequently, Krstelj pursued the career of an attorney in Zadar and Šibenik. He was a member of the Party of Rights and its Zadar regional committee secretary since 1897. Krstelj left the party, together with Mate Drinković, in protest against its proposed merger with the People's Party in 1905. He became the municipal mayor in Šibenik in 1906–1913. In 1910 and 1911, Krstelj was elected to the leadership of the Party of Rights in Dalmatia and to the leadership of the unified Party of Rights with the Kingdom of Serbia to prevent occupation of the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, i.e. Dalmatian coast, by the forces of the Kingdom of Italy enforcing provisions of the Treaty of London.
Following the end of World War I and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs appointed Krstelj a member of the three-member provincial government of the former Austro-Hungarian crown land of Dalmatia, along with Josip Smodlaka and Vjekoslav Škarica. The provincial government administered the region in the run-up to the arrival of Allies of World War I and their occupation of the eastern Adriatic in 1918.
Krstelj was elected a member of the Constitutional Assembly of the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on the Democratic Party ticket in the 1920 parliamentary elections. Krstelj held leading offices in the Democratic Party until 1927 and he was a government minister of religion in 1921–1922.