Governing centre-right party again takes first place in election – but may struggle to find coalition partrners to achieve a majority in parliament.
According to the first unofficial results of the State Election Commission, Croatia’s governing centre-right party, the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, convincingly won the parliamentary elections on Wednesday and took 61 of the 151 seats.
Its main challenger, the “River of Justice” coalition, gathered around the Social Democratic Party, SDP, won 42.
The rightist Homeland Movement came third with 14 seats, Most (The Bridge) won 11, and Mozemo! (We Can!) won 10.
The Istrian Democratic Parliament, IDS, and Independent Platform North won two seats each, and the Fokus-Republika coalition won one.
No party has an absolute majority in parliament, which requires the support of 76 votes. The post-election coalitions that will be negotiated in the coming days will form the majority that will elect the Prime Minister and members of the government.
Croatia’s parliament consists of 151 seats, of which 140 are elected in ten territorial units in Croatia. Three seats are elected by the diaspora and eight by national minorities, three by the Serbian national minority. The other 21 minorities elect five. The special constituency for Croatian citizens without residence in Croatia gave the HDZ three mandates, with 79.87 per cent of the votes.
The elections were marked by a high turnout, which was attributed in part to a short but stormy campaign between HDZ Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and President Zoran Milanovic, who was not even a candidate, but acted as an unofficial representative of the opposition.
On Thursday, Plenkovic said the new government should be formed by the winner of the election, meaning the HDZ. In his speech, he also attacked Milanovic’s “flagrant violation of the Constitution”.
“There is a big difference between us and other political parties, especially those that tonight again articulated a kind of hate speech against the HDZ … I invite all those parties that have won the trust of Croatian citizens, and do not show this kind of a priori exclusivity, like those who we defeated by almost 20 points,” Plenkovic said.
But Sandra Bencic from Mozemo! said it was still possible to keep the HDZ from power.
“The scenario that the HDZ is removed from power and the right does not enter the government is achievable, I call on all political actors from left to right who swore that their main goal is to destroy the corrupt octopus and that they will never be with HDZ, to be consistent like us, to respect citizens and voters and say no to the HDZ,” she said.
“These results are certainly not what we wished for,” said SDP president Pedja Grbin, “but they showed that two-thirds of the citizens want changes, that they are not satisfied with what is happening in Croatia, and we will not let them down.”
