On the Eve of Elections
AIM Zagreb, 20 December, 1999
Everything is clear when the forthcoming parliamentary elections are concerned, but almost nothing when presidential elections are concerned, which ought to give the answer to the question who will replace the recently passed away Franjo Tudjman. As it is generally known, parliamentary elections will take place on 3 January, or in two weeks, so that an unusually short campaign is going on at the moment, and political parties have already submitted lists of candidates with whom they will appear in ten electoral districts and the eleventh in diaspora.
No less than 55 parties entered the election race and this is three times more than in the previous elections, so that it is already possible to talk about a latent nightmare, but there is one convincing explanation for this. It is evident that multipartism in Croatia has not come up to expectations, more precisely it bears meagre and deformed fruit on the same tree from which others collect a very abundant harvest, and this certainly is not just a coincidence because it is widely known that Tudjman was in favour of a very narrowed down political scene with two, three, four parties on it at the most, which would not have been so bad if he had not aspired to decide which parties these would be.
Therefore the current crowd on the political scene could be taken as a reaction to this intended and partly effectuated party engineering. Arithmetically observed, the reaction was more than tumultous (if the word had not been used for other purposes, perhaps it would be best to say that it was "stormy"), because for a few more than 150 seats in the assembly - the number is not fixed because the number of deputies from the diaspora will depend on the turnout of voters - more than four thousand candidates are competing. That is why Television which is just carrying political programs and stands of this division of persons who wish to be members of parliament is smothered by boring monologues which probably nobody watches.
Numerous polls published mostly by independent newspapers give expressed advantage to the opposition with approximately thirty four to five per cent to the coalition of Racan's Social Democrats and Budisa's Liberals, another fifteen odd per cent to the coalition of the remaining four parliamentary parties (Tomcic's HSS, Gotovac's LS, Jakovcic's IDS and Cacic's HNS), while the election rating of the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) is somewhere around 25 per cent. Tudjman's death which has according to the official data gathered 250 thousand citizens in the funeral procession (which should most probably be divided by two), will hardly change anything, and this is confirmed by the latest questionnaires as well. The departure of the leader and founder of HDZ has increased popularity of this party by only 1.7 per cent.
It should be said, though, that reliability of these polls is not exactly dazzling. On the eve of certain previous elections they had announced the victory of the opposition, sometimes even very impressive, but that did not prevent HDZ from winning. Nowadays, this is out of the question, at least in the sense of absolute majority this party has now, thanks to the new proportionate election system which evenly reflects the relation of forces on the party scene. But the possibility that HDZ might win relative majority cannot completely be ruled out, in other words, it might win a few seats more that the coalition of the Social Democrats and the Liberals and then rely on disunity of the two opposition coalitions in estblishing of parliamentary majority and of the new government.
Possibility that this will happen is not too hight, but it is impossible to say that there is none either. The so-called opposition six which consists of two coalition blocks was not capable of reaching an agreement about their joint running in parliamentary elections, and the same is being repeated with the presidential elections. The six are unable to reach an agreement about a commom presidential candidate and this is what at the moment they have in common with HDZ, because in that party they also cannot agree who they will nominate. The problem of the six is still somewhat smaller. It can afford to nominate more than one candidate, and that is exactly what most probably it will do, so it is certain that the candidates will be Drazen Budisa, but also probably Zlatko Tomcic and Stipe Mesic.
In HDZ, the most probable candidate for the president is foreign minister Mate Granic, the most popular politician of those in power, who enjoys unconcealed support of the West and the Church, but with powerful and semi-official opponents in deputy chairman of the assembly Vladimir Seks, secretary general of HDZ Drago Krpina and probably the closest Tudjman's associate Ivic Pasalic. That is the reason why the decision about the candidate of HDZ was postponed from last week to the day after Christmas. It is equally uncertain who will replace Tudjman at the head of the party, so that the decision on that was postponed even more for after the parliamentary and presidential elections in order to prevent wearing out of the party on two parallel equally hot and exhausting tracks.
After longish consideration, HDZ made it public that its government would schedule the first round of presidential elections for 23 January, 2000. Since Tudjman's death HDZ was silent about presidential elections, so that it was not quite clear to the public when they will take place because the Constitution is not clear either in the part which regulates this. It says that after the death of the president, a new one must be elected within 60 days, but it is not precise whether within that time limit the citizens must be called to the polls or whether everything must be over by then, and this means two election rounds, possible court appeals, etc. It seems that the former possibility suits everybody better, according to which by the beginning of February at the latest the name of the new head of the state would be known, because nobody, neither the opposition nor HDZ can for long endure the present tensions which threaten to destroy the parties from within even before the competition with their rivals in the elections.
It seemed that HDZ was taking it well and that the severe illness of Franjo Tudjman was strengthening the ties among the factions. This party, for instance, a few weeks ago nominated Nikica Valentic for the future prime minister and Vladimir Seks for the chairman of the assembly; all it needed to do was to approve of Granic's candidacy for the president of the Republic. But the nominees soon realised that they were granted something very uncertain, so Seks soon after that declared that he was giving up on the ambition to run for the head of the state and the head of the party. At the same time he calmly stated that he would think about Granic's candidacy when the time comes for that, without leaving even the polite possibility that he might openly support him.
That is how Granic's "certain" candidacy suddenly started hanging by a thread and then it was additionally undermined when only four heads of states or governments showed up at Tudjman's funeral, most of them from the territory of the Balkan which Croatia is denying with so much contempt to have anything in common. Granic's opponents proclaimed him responsible for it and aware that he was not popular in HDZ due to foreign policy he is pursuing they arranged it that his candidacy will not be decided by the narrow but by the broader party leadership. His possible rejection would then be presented as the expression of the will of the membership and not haggling at the top of the party.
Through journalists close to him Granic immediately responded with the announcement that he might run for president as an independent candidate which is a threat that will be impossible to ignore. Granic is indeed by far the most popular politician of HDZ and if his opponents persist in personal animosities towards him, apart from probable loss of the parliamentary majority, they are risking losing the top post in the state and this would be a true election debacle. That is why Granic will, all things considered, remain in the game if for no other reason, for the mere instinct of this party to survive, but this rotten compromise will quite certainly accelerate dissolution and even the complete wreck and ruin of the party if it fares bad in the elections.
MARINKO CULIC
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