Comeback of Croat Democratic Community (HDZ)

AIM Zagreb, May 23, 2001

Photographs of overjoyed leaders of Croat Democratic Community with broad smiles on their faces flooded Croatian media. People speak of a triumph and grand comeback of this party. That is how the results of Sunday local elections are interpreted. These were the first general elections after the ones on January 3 last year when in parliamentary elections the six-member coalition badly defeated HDZ and interrupted its ten-year long rule of Croatia.

HDZ has now won in big style. Out of 21 districts in Croatia, this party is in the lead in 15. This means that it is the strongest party in the state all over again. Some analysts are inclined, however, to relativise this impression on triumph, some even claim that HDZ has lost the elections. In fact, the situation is not unequivocal. If the results accomplished by HDZ are compared with the fact that so far this party had controlled two thirds of local power, it is indeed going downward. But if the comparison is made with the number of votes it won a year ago, then it has remained approximately where it used to be. But all those who speak of great success of HDZ refer to the turbulence that party had gone through in the past year, when it seemed that it would not survive at all, and to investigations that unanimously predicted its great defeat.

But although it will remain the first party in Croatia, HDZ will be able to consume just a minor part of its advantage. In majority of districts the administration will be established by the six-party coalition, because it is very difficult for HDZ to find partners. It is also highly probable that their internal relations will additionally complicate because of the outcome of the elections. The six parties have achieved very different results. The Social Democrats of Prime Minister Ivica Racan have confirmed their central position. Together with HDZ, SDP is considered to be the winner of the elections. It ranks the first in Zagreb which forms about one fourth of human and all other potentials of Croatia, and it is second in the state.

But SDP's first partner, the Liberals (HSLS) of Drazen Budisa, experienced a fiasco. They have not even crossed the necessary threshold, so that they will not at all participate in the assembly of Zagreb. They are trying to find a pretext for the failure in the allegation that the electorate has split into the right and the left, and that in such a constellation, the political centre has disappeared. But in such conditions, Croat People's Party (HNS) with its brisk leader Vesna Pusic, the party which was so far on the margins and which is also a party of the centre, has succeeded in winning the third place. In HSLS they also claim that they are the victims of bad perception of the work of Racan's government in Croatian public. But, had that been really the case, would not Racan's SDP be the first to be punished. This has not happened. In any case pressure is rising among the defeated right Liberals to withdraw this party from the coalition of the ruling six. In that case, the rest of the coalition would lose the majority in the parliament and a new combination would have to be made, which is hardly possible without new elections. But should the six parties remain together, along with the rule of Croatia on the state level, the coalition will take over a large portion of power on the local level.

But even in that case there is not much reason for great satisfaction, because the results of the elections are a very serious warning for the current authorities that they have not met the expectations of the voters. The reasons for the large shift in the disposition of the voters are not too hard to find. Demoralisation and apathy have reached enormous proportions in Croatia and they were materialised in enormous abstention of the voters in the elections. Only about 45 per cent of the voters have voted in these elections, which is very little in Croatian conditions, in any case much less than in any previous elections.

The ruling coalition was not capable of offering motivation to its voters to come to the polling stations. Unlike it, the voters of HDZ and the right options managed to consolidate their ranks and this time appeared at the polls in great numbers. The absence of the voters of the six is explained by their disappointment. The current authorities have not succeeded in justifying the great expectations placed in them last year. The economic situation is increasingly hard to endure, and worst of all, there is no visible sign that this is a temporary situation. The feeling prevails that sinking has not been interrupted yet, that the government is not capable of grappling with the crisis. Infantile quarrels in the ruling coalition, hair-splitting and quibbling over minor issues have also discouraged the voters of the coalition of the six parties.

The ruling coalition is additionally responsible for the Croatian step back because it has permitted the entire negative heritage of HDZ fall into oblivion in the past year and a half for as long as it is in power, so that this party is now reappearing, all dressed up, washed and made up. In fact, ever since it had taken over power, the coalition of the six is yelling that the situation was terrible, but nobody has been called to account even for obvious rascalry and corruptness of former authorities. The ruling coalition has done nothing to politically discredit the malignant heritage of their predecessors, they have not opened the process of de-Tudjmanisation, HDZ was practically forgiven for everything it had done.

The current authorities have also helped the comeback of HDZ by permitting the rightists to draw Croatia into debates which are nowadays politically irrelevant but in which, in the country with still open war wounds, it is easy to stir up nationalistic emotions. HDZ and extreme rightist groups which are marching all over Croatia are doing their best to spread suspicion about “patriotism” of the ruling group, making them appear as potential traitors of the “national cause”. To put it simply they are trying to reduce the political scene to the conflict between the “Croats” and the “Reds”, or those who are in favour of the Croatian state and those who are questionable in this sense. This scenario implies, as it was publicly stated, bringing Croatia into a situation in which in the elections people choose not parties but sides.

The story about the threatened state and polarisation is needed by the rightists to mobilise their supporters, to turn the nation back to the topics of ten years ago, to isolate Social Democrats as the central party of the six-member coalition in power and to draw their coalition partners to back them. The authorities did not resist this pushing of the country into open histerical nationalism, but by accepting to constantly offer evidence of its national correctness, it in fact supported it. They failed to understand that their only chance was in normalisatoion of Croatia.

One of the main creators of the said scenario, Miroslav Tudjman, elder son of the late president of the state, announces that polarisation of Croatia will continue. As the former, at his daddy's time, head of the secret services, he certainly knows how to go about to achieve that. His recently formed political association was surprisingly successful in the elections having won eight per cent of the votes, so that it has a stronghold from which it could go on. In the first post-election statement Tudjman junior promised further radicalisation of the political scene, but also that he would force the authorities to schedule early elections by the end of the year claiming that “this time it will be just either we or they”.

After Sunday elections, Croatia is passing from the hands of HDZ into those of the six parties on the local level this time. HDZ has not managed to preserve power, but everybody is speaking about its big success. Generally speaking, it turned out that the current authorities are not capable for the job. The impotence of democratic parties in some of the other countries in transition has paved the road for the comeback of the rightists. This still has not happened in Croatia, but nothing is impossible any more.

Jelena Lovric

(AIM)