George Washington
At the end of his second term, Washington retired for personal and political reasons, fatigued and disgusted with personal attacks, and to assure a truly contested presidential election could be held. He did not feel bound to a two-term limit, but his retirement ultimately set precedent. The two-term limit to the presidency was formalized with the 1951 adoption of the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Washington is often credited with setting the principal of a two-term presidency, but it was Thomas Jefferson who first refused to run for a third term on political grounds.
Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević
Prior to this, Milošević was cracking down on opposition, non-government organisations and independent media. From 1991 onwards there were campaigns of civil resistance against his administration that were to culminate in the largely non-violent revolution of October 2000. As the end of his first term in office of the president of Yugoslavia approached (previously, he had been elected president of Serbia, in two terms, from 1989 to 1997), on 6 July 2000, the rules of the election of the president were changed. Whilst the president of Yugoslavia had previously been chosen for one term only by the legislature, in the Yugoslav parliament, it was now to be directly elected via the two-round voting system of presidential elections with a maximum of two terms. Many onlookers believed that Milošević's intentions for supporting such reforms had more to do with holding power than with improving democracy. On 27 July 2000, the authorities announced that the early elections were to be held 24 September 2000, although Milošević's term wouldn't expire until June 2001. The elections for the upper house of the federal parliament, Council of Citizens ("Veće građana"), as well as the local elections were also scheduled to be held on the same date.