NEW CROATIAN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

AIM, ZAGREB, February 28, 1994

Spring cleaning is not over in Croatian political circles, and it is becoming increasingly evident that slowly but surely, depending on many things, in particularly on war or peace, a new political geography is being created. If the direct interference of the state and the HDZ is seen as the cause of cleavage in Paraga's Party of Right, if the same applies in the case of the Dalmatian Action, whose members are to appear in court charged with placing dynamite in their own offices, and it all began after a survey showed that this regional party was becoming the second or third force in Dalmatia, then the attempts to finally give shape and form to the Croatian political scene are to "blame" for developments within the other parties.

The present state, with the dominating position of the mastodon, the HDZ, which has taken on the role of the former Socialist Alliance gathering people of varied political views whose sole aim for joining the Party was to change the system and then create the independent Croatian state, and with only one serious opposition party - Budisa's HSLS, but only when the number of voters in concerned, and a whole series of midget parties, among which only the Croatian Peasants Party, Croatian National Party, Croatian Party of Right and the Social Democratic Party of Croatia are of any relevance, does not actually reflect the natural pattern of political views in Croatia. The latest surveys show that today the HDZ would get 35.9 percent of the votes, which is far bellow the 43.72 percent it won at the 1992 elections.

The number two party would be the HSLS with 33.2% (in 1992 - 17.335), the HPS would get 7.1%, HSS - 5-3%, the SDP 3.6%, Dalmatian Action 3.0% and the Istrian Democratic Convention 2.7%. Tudjman as President, according to this survey,would receive 45.1% of the votes in the first circle, Budisa 24.6%, which is somewhat of a fall in the case of Tudjman since at the last elections he won 56.73 % of the votes, and a rise for Budisa who got 21.87 percent of the votes.

However, all these are reckonings without one's host, since there is hardly a party in Croatia which is not shattered by inner disagreements. Even Tudjman no longer hesitates to used terms such as "leftist" and "rightist" while the major disagreements are over the issues of anti-fascism, the conciliation of Croats, the transition process, level of democracy, attitude towards the mass media and human and national freedoms. For the present Tudjman has been successful with his policy - balancing between the left and the right, in preserving the unity of the Party, but the question is how long will he be successfull.

The last touchstone was the attempt to replace the President of the Assembly, Stipe Mesic, and although it failed it is more than certain that the story will not end there and that in fact his replacement has actually only been postponed, since differences are so great that it is hard to assume that at one point the Party will not openly split into a least two parts.

Rumors have been circulating for quite some time now, that Drazen Budisa is leaving the number one place in the HSLS, which has been denied a few days ago for the umpteenth time, although in this case as well, it is a Party that has gathered individuals of incompatible political views, just as its very name is a compromise. Even those that are only vaguely familiar with political theory will easily conclude that the Party has been misnamed, considering that it is only one of the numerous variants of national parties, such as the Party of Right, HSS or HNS, and partly even the Social Democratic Party of Croatia.

Things have began to break even there where they seemed the most stable. A member of the Presidency of the Croatian Peasants Party and a deputy in Parliament, Mirko Madjor, sent an open letter recently to the President of the Party, Drago Stipac, accusing him of "giving priority to his generational friends over young and educated people, peasants, workers and intellectuals," and " of consciously transforming the Party into a specific type of peasants' trade union", adding in conclusion that the situation in the Party was a reflection of a " specific and odd combination of anarchy and autocracy."

As far as the HNS is concerned, it began to crumble after the dramatic election fiasco, so that a change of leadership and the departure of Savka Dapcevic-Kucar are to unsue.

The Left is the only segment in which some attempts at unification are being made, although with great difficulty. The question is whether this experiment will give specific results, since the main obstacle is the status of individuals and only after that their ideologies. For the time being Racan's Social Democrats are all by united with Vujic's Social Democrats, while the remaining left-wing parties: Degen's Socialists and Horvat's Social Democratic Union have not given up aspirations to join the left-wing.

The extreme anomisities between some of the leaders ( for instance Racan - Horvat) are an obstruction to serious negotiations, but numerous political analysts believe that the Left has a "joker in the sleeve", meaning Mika Tripalo who is to restore the Croatian left-wing its rightful place in the Croatian political geography. It is believed that under Tripalo's leadership the Left would achieve better electoral results than the four parties had together, and in 1992 they won 8.37 percent of the votes, out of which the great majority of them was given to Racan's reformed communists.

As far as regional parties are concerned, and their formation was a direct reaction to Zagreb's centralism and unitarian state, it was considred at one point that they could seriously jeopardize the supremacy of the HDZ, at least in some regions of Croatia. The Dalmatian Action succeeded in wining 10.9% of the votes at the last elections for the regional chamber of the Split discrict and thus became, after the HDZ and the HSLS the third rating party. Its popularity was constantly on the rise until disagreements began to shake it, followed by the blow of political trials, making it extremely difficult today to forecast the prospects of this Party.

However, the HDZ received the greatest blow from the Istrian Democratic Convention which won as many as 66.40 % of the votes in its district and almost all the seats in the local home-rule. Thereby, this regional, or as others call it, autonomist Party has taken the place held by Racan's SDP in the first elections, which can in itself speak of its origin. Nevertheless from the very begining of this Party's activity, it was clear that it was inflicted with the same syndrome as the HDZ, since what the HDZ was at the level of Croatia, the IDS was in Istria.

Many predicted that this state - both the IDS and others - could not last long since differences in the approaches of what Istria was to be,the degree of regionalism and autonomy were becoming ever more expressed. Publicly it all began to crack in January in the district assembly, when the membership split over, at first glance, a technical issue: whether there should be five or twelfe home-rule offices. Two concepts were in the background of the dilemma: according to some, Istria should be a region with a special status, which implies legislative and executive powers, while according to others, it should fight with all available means for the status of the region of Istria, in which citizens could decide, through their parliament and government, on the fate of that region. Therefore, some are for immediate action, while others considered that to be only a goal.

The entire conflict, which should after all be reduced to a typical struggle for power, ended with the decision brought at the extraordinary assembly of the IDS to exclude from its ranks three of the founders and leading men in the Party,Ivan Herak and Elio and Darko Martincic. All this happened while Herak was on a business trip in America, which only supports the assumption that the whole affair was a result of the struggle for power and shading it with conspirational tones. The two leading men that banned "Herak's group", since ten more people have been excluded, are the President of the Party, Ivan Jakovcic and the Istrian "zupan" Luciano Delbianco, who accused the group of not respecting party discipline and of cooperating without control and of their own initiative with the authorites, and especially with President Tudjman. Herak, whom many from the ruling party would gladly see as minister or vice-president, denies the accusations of being a HDZ "mole" in the IDS, claiming that zupan Delbianco was the key man in "the IDS affair."

" Delbianco joined the IDS (previously he had been a member of the SDP and as such was the major of Pula) convinced that it was the thing to do from the political point of view. I know that man flirted until the very last moment both with the HDZ and the HNS and with many other parties which called him. He negotiated with the HDZ even at the time when he had already signed the IDS membership application form. I shall do everything I possible can to prove my suspicions that Luciano Delbianco is in fact a HDZ "mole" in the ranks of the IDS and that he is trying to destroy the party", Herak points out.

The founders of the IDS, Elio Martincic, adds: " we did not work hard enough. We acted triumphantly, we behaved like the HDZ." Otherwise, he believes the HDZ has nothing to do with this, since it would imply a Kafkaesque or Orwellian search for the guilty ones among a third party, regardless of the fact that it would suit the HDZ as well as other parties to see the IDS lose popularity in Istria.

Many are asking if after all it was not just part of a normal process, since if the de-HDZ-ation is apparent in Croatia, why would de-IDS-ation not be a normal thing in Istria? Why would the predominance of one Party be unfavourable for the process of democratization in Croatia and favourable for Istria? Perhaps only from the opposition's point of view.

GOJKO MARINKOVIC