POLITICS-CROATIA: Right Turn in the Balkans

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

ZAGREB, Croatia, Nov 24 2003 (IPS) - The parties of the right have achieved substantial success in the Croatian parliamentary elections. They are now likely to rule for the next four years.

Croatia was ruled by a coalition of left parties before the elections held Sunday.

According to figures released by the State Electoral Commission at noon local time Monday, the three parties of the right led by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) had won 76 seats compared to 51 for the left. With more than 80 percent of votes counted, the trend is not going to change substantially, the Commission said.

HDZ, a nationalist and rightist party, was founded by late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman. Tudjman who died four years ago led Croatia into the 1991-95 war of independence from former Yugoslavia.

After Tudjman’s death, his party was replaced by the left coalition in a landslide victory in 2000. The five-member left group led by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has now suffered a major blow.

The turnout was 66 percent among 3.5 million voters.

The complicated electoral process has yet to include votes from some 400,000 Croats living abroad, and for the eight seats provided for the minorities (Serbs, Italians, Hungarians, Bosniaks). The parliament can have no less than 140 and no more than 160 seats.

The completion of the process is due to take at least another ten days. The final results will be released Dec. 5.

"These elections were only about the return of HDZ to power," analyst Davor Butkovic told IPS. "The real life issues were not tackled, and Croatia practically witnessed a paradox – a revolution by the conservatives."

Butkovic believes that people punished the SDP-led government for its inability to improve the economic situation and to deal with the remnants of Tudjman’s regime.

The new rich who had surrounded the Tudjman family and profited from the murky privatisation process in 1991-2000 remained beyond the reach of law.

Not even the process of joining the European Union in 2007 that the reform-oriented SDP government had initiated in February seemed to matter to most voters on Sunday.

It is not clear how far the right-wing parties will continue down their old ways. The HDZ has distanced itself from the war-time politics of Tudjman, but it is still strongly nationalist, and proud of the victory over Serbia in the independence war.

A hangover of that past remains. The EU assessment process due to be finished in April next year calls for the extradition of those indicted for violations before the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia at The Hague in The Netherlands..

This means mostly Croatian Serbs. About 200,000 of them left Croatia in 1995 following the offensive by Tudjman’s army that crushed their Belgrade-backed rebellion. Only 30,000 have returned so far to Croatia. The new government could view Croatian Serbs differently from the last one.

Croatian President Stipe Mesic told journalists Monday morning that he is in no hurry to give the mandate to any of the parties to form the government yet.

"We have to wait until the consultations between the parties are over, which will happen after the official results are released; then we have to wait for the parliament to be called," Mesic said.

Sources close to Mesic say that is likely between Christmas and New Year.. The deadline for forming a government will be a month after that.

Croatian columnist Jelena Lovric says the elections marked "a milestone reached by the young Croatian democracy." It was a change from the time when HDZ lost power (in 2000) "when people expected tanks to turn up in the streets, fearing that the nationalists would not step down from power peacefully."