COALITION IN FAVOUR OF THE HDZ

AIM Zagreb, 11 February, 1997

The scene deja vu before the previous elections in Croatia is now repeated: months before the elections, the opposition is on the offensive and gleaming with optimism, announcing a sure victory, but then turns everything the other way round and "sure winners" begin giving stuttering statements and making staggering steps. Then the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) overcomes its apathy and with renewed self-confidence, comparatively skilfully patches up the holes on its false front so that the same old suspicion is creeping into the public: does the opposition want to come to power at all?!

This time such extreme dilemma was occasioned by two biggest opposition parties, the Liberal and the Peasants', which published that they would run together in local elections and the elections for the Chamber of Districts of the Assembly which are scheduled to take place in slightly more than a month. The degree of cooperation is comparatively low, but the two parties will nevertheless to a certain extent jointly run in the parliamentary elections, while a slight possibility was left for reaching an agreement only on the local level. As if this coalition of the Liberals and the Peasants is rather an alibi for dismemberment of the until now quite monolithic opposition, especially in Zagreb, than for opposing the HDZ.

Main reproaches and protests from other opposition parties are pointing in this direction, so that it is possible to hear that the aim of the leaders of the Liberals and the Peasants is not to defeat Tudjman's party but to impose themselves as an unquestioned authority in the opposition, even if the ruling position of the HDZ is not threatened. Only somewhat milder doubts are coming from the very ranks of the two newly-fledged coalition partners, and one of the leaders of the Croat Social Liberal Party (HSLS) Drazen Budisa claims that the head of the Liberals Vlado Gotovac recognizes in the coalition a possibility for his candidacy in presidential elections to be supported by the Croat Peasants' Party. In return, he would allow the Croat Peasants' Party (HSS) to develop into the largest opposition party and take over the primacy enjoyed so far by his HSLS.

Gotovac is, therefore, suspected that he is for personal reasons ready to sacrifice the interest of his party he has taken over the leadership of which last year from Budisa. The President of the HSS, Tomcic, is presented as a cunning and quick-witted "peasant", because he had drawn Gotovac into headquarters' intrigues, while Gotovac turned out to be a sucker, because the HSS will use him in order to take the lead, but will certainly refuse to back him in the final stage of the presidential elections. Budisa believes that this quibbling of the two biggest opposition parties is harmful for the opposition in general and claims that they should have insisted on a tripartite coalition in which the HSS and the HSLS would be joined by Racan's SDP.

But, this too could be considered as part of that same quibbling, because Budisa does not conceal presidential ambitions, which means that Gotovac is his rival, and the other large opposition parties would be a desirable support for him in the elections. That is where the flattery to "quick-witted peasants" from the HSS and good offices offered to the SDP come from, although indeed it was Budisa and not Gotovac who promoted the typical distrust of the SDP - he expressedly refused cooperation with them even when it could bring him direct benefit - holding the spare trump card of "anti-communism" in his sleeve for the customary propagandist caricaturing before the elections. After all, on that very "anti-communism", Budisa initiated last year's negotiations between the HDZ and the HSLS, the unuttered but still very tangible motive of which was creation of some sort of neo-conservative partnership which would interrupt development of left forces in the country and prevent the alleged danger of restoration of reformed communists in Croatia.

Budisa's reasons to be angry with the coalition of the HSLS and the HSS can maybe best be explained by the fact that the authorities of the two parties have "stolen" his idea and applied it in a somewhat corrected form (they established a mutual connection and not with the HDZ). In any case, artificial increase of tensions with the "former communists" (the expression increasingly used by the opposition) is omnipresent in pre-election plans of both Budisa and Gotovac-Tomcic. These tensions are acquiring proportions of an open campaign or even hue and cry against Racan's party, perhaps only because this kind of disloyalty among opposition parties would not be supported by voters, but also because everyone is aware that the SDP has a long time ago ceased to be a "left" party in the usual sense of the word (the Socialist Internationale has recently refused to receive Croatian ex-communists having assessed that their party has become too "national).

By turning their back to the SDP, the HSLS and the HSS obviously intend to push this party to the left and take control over the part of the political centre occupied by it at present. Since the SDP is growing very quickly and since it is not impossible that it will in a foreseeable future become the greatest opposition party, this has a clear overtone of a wish to prevent this and push Racan's party to the margins of the political scene where it had been for several years. It is quite probable that such a plan cannot succeed, because the SDP such as it is simply will not allow to be pushed to the left, and if pressures in this direction become too open and rough, an even greater number of voters will turn towards this party and give their support to it in the elections out of solidarity. But even if it fails in this sense, the coalition of the HSS and the HSLS will be, and already is efficient in something else.

And that is splitting the opposition into two parts (rejected small parties will certainly seek the possibility of surviving in an alliance with the SDP). This will diminish the possibility of defeating the HDZ or more precisely, a much greater effort will be needed to defeat it now and probably only "against" circled by voters in a plebiscite would be a guarantee that this would happen. This is clearly seen from the statements made by HDZ officials who welcomed this coalition, allegedly because it had united parties which had much more in common than seven parties in Zagreb coalition which had spread from the left all the way to the right. It is clear, however, that HDZ members are not happy about the ideological two-member coalition, but nor do they have any reason to be too worried about it, but they simply know that two is less than seven. And that their prospects to "survive" the elections are growing in exactly that proportion.

This "to survive" is not exaggeration, because in the last local elections, in autumn the year before last, Tudjman's party experienced a real fiasco in Zagreb (united opposition won about 65 per cent of votes), and it fared below expectations in the last elections for the parliament as well (elections for the Chamber of Representatives of the Assembly, at the same time as in Zagreb). It ought to be underlined that the opposition in both cases was more united than before, which was immediately highly awarded by the voters, so that it was logical to expect that this would decrease even with the big coalition in the forthcoming elections. A step backward was made instead, which perhaps would not deserve a special review had the big opposition parties done it because of their own, even if they were wrong, pre-election evaluations.

But it is more likely that they have bowed their heads because of the banal propaganda stereotype the HDZ has been insisting on for months. And this is that coalitions of heterogeneous parties are "unnatural" (especially if "former comunists" are among them), and that it is compromising to run in the elections "just in order to turn over HDZ and win power". That these cheap "axioms" were effective is evident from the fact that the latent idea of a split in the opposition which was comparatively easily overcome so far, has come out on the surface just before the elections. And with such poor "timing" it is hardly possible to achieve active, but least of all passive franchise.

MARINKO CULIC