Election Victory of Democratic Croatia

AIM Zagreb, 4 January, 2000

Croatian voters have decided that they were fed up of the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) and their rule. And that is the reason why in the elections for the Chamber of Representatives of the Croatian state assembly held in the first days of the new year (3 January 2000), the coalition of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDP) and the Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS) won more than a clear victory, while HDZ suffered a crushing election defeat. The coalition of Racan's SDP and Budisa's HSLS won decisively, in one electoral district it has a minimum majority, and HDZ won a relative majority of the votes in a single electoral district.

As the other opposition coalition (Croatian Peasants' Party, Istrian Democratic League, Liberal Party and Croat People's Party) achieved a sound election result by winning on the average about 15 per cent of the votes and since it had signed a pre-election agreement with SDP-HSLS coalition on post-election cooperation, these six opposition parties will have a comfortable majority in the parliament and they will easily be able to elect their government and take over power in Croatia.

And although these are still temporary and unofficial election results after counting of 76.71 per cent of votes, it is already clear that out of 140 representatives elected in 10 electoral districts, SDP-HSLS coalition will have about 70 seats, HDZ about 40, the coalition of the opposition four about 25, conservative rightist coalition - Croat Party of Right (HSP) and the Croat Christian Democratic Party (HKDU) - five seats. There will also be five representatives of ethnic minorities in the assembly, and a still uknown number of representatives of the Croat diaspora who were elected in the separate - eleventh electoral district. The number of representatives of the diaspora will be calculated according to an unfixed quota, which will depend on the turnout of voters and the average needed number of votes for election of a single assembly representative in the other ten electoral districts. In the electoral district for the diaspora in which Croats from Bosnia & Herzegovina were the large majority that voted, after counting of one quarter of the votes, HDZ won 64 per cent, SDP-HSLS coalition 15 per cent, HSP-HKDU slightly below seven per cent. Although in that electoral district HDZ is decisively in the lead, it achieved a worse result than in previous elections, and SDP and HSLS have for the first time won seats in it. But these five or six seats in the assembly in the distribution of power in Croatia will not mean what they used to in the previous assembly.

In the first reactions after the elections, leaders of the victorious two, Ivica Racan and Drazen Budisa were themselves surprised by the decisiveness of their victory which they expected but not with such a large majority.

On the other hand, leaders of HDZ were almost dumbfounded by their failure, they hardly managed to utter congratulations through clenched teeth to the election winners, and already at dawn of the first post-election day Slavonian leader of HDZ Branimir Glavas demanded from the members of the presidency of HDZ to prepare their resignations and offer them to the main board which will meet two days after parliamentary elections to nominate the presidential candidate of HDZ.

The shadow of discontent with the election result overcast the coalition of the opposition four, too, because it is at least by five seats smaller than what was expected. More precisely, while IDS and HSS won the expected number of seats in the assembly, each Gotovac's Liberal Party and Sacic's HNS will have a couple representatives less than they expected.

The rightist conservative coalition HSP-HKDU won exactly the number of seats public opinion polls had predicted, but less than what they announced and expected.

The first announcement of the victorious coalition after the elections that their three fundamental goals after taking over power will be to lead the country out of the economic and social crisis, to elliminate the deficiencies in the democratic system of the country, and to draw Croatia out of international isolation, in fact conveys the causes of their triumphant victory. Croatian voters chose radical change of authorities because of the increasingly difficult life on the verge of poverty and existential hopelessness, the epidemic of corruption and crime which have spread around Croatia under the wing of HDZ regime, undemocratic, authoritarian and totalitarian violation of all democratic norms and police and political persecution of political opponents and those who thought differently, and complete isolation of Croatia in international political relations. They recognised the best guarantee for changes in the coalition of Social Democrats and Social Liberals and they placed their confidence in them.

The election results were also significantly affected by the almost record turnout of voters in the elections, which was almost equal to that in the first multiparty elections in 1990. Almost 77 per cent of the voters came to the polls, which is significantly higher than what surveys has indicated. Obviously just a small number of voters remained undecided, they simply hastened to the polls in order to say good-bye to the regime of HDZ. For such a high turnout of the voters merit to a large extent goes to the non-governmental associations Glas 99 and GONG which had for months appealed on the voters to come to the polls in a well conceived and organised campaign. Majority of analysts consider their campaign to be the most convincing, better even than the campaign of the victorious coalition, and especially than that of HDZ and all the other parties. Besides, GONG (Citizens for Organised Monitoring of Elections) and its about five thousand volunteers controlled regularity of the elections at almost all polling stations and probably due to their activity, as well as multiparty polling committees there were no major violations of election rules and the number of invalid ballots was hardly above one per cent. Since in previous elections decisively won by HDZ the number of invalid ballots was always above three per cent, it is assessed that the efficient GONG's monitoring of the elections prevented this form of theft practised so far by HDZ and its activists.

While the former opposition is facing the tedious job of organising new authorities and pulling the country out of the crisis, in the forthcoming days HDZ will be threatened by a definite collapse and dissolution of Tudjman's party which the first president of independent Croatian state led as an amorphous political movement in which different ideologies and their followers conflicted, mostly drawn to it by radical nationalism and chauvinism advocated by Tudjman and his closest associates in the leadership of the party.

As results of parliamentary elections will inevitably affect the outcome of presidential elections which will take place in three weeks and in which Tudjman's successor will be elected, it is already almost certain that HDZ will lose that key lever of power as well. That is the reason why the just completed elections are a turning point which has happened to Croatia on the dividing line between two milleniums. The shortest evaluation is summarised in the statement which says that if independent Croatia was born in 1990 elections, then after ten bloody years, democratic Croatia was born in 2000 elections.

Zoran Daskalovic

AIM Zagreb