The run down:
1. The HDZ won the most Parliament seats (61 as of the time this article was written)
2. That number does not include votes counted from areas outside Croatia. And traditionally, the diaspora tends to be more conservative. Thus, the HDZ will probably be gaining more seats.
3. While it looks like the HDZ is the victorious party, it isn't a runaway victory. As the SDP increased their presence by 20 seats. Earning (again, as of the time of this article) 57/152 seats. And for trivia buffs out there, it is also the SDP's best result since-multiparty elections took place in 1990.
4. And to sum it up: Croatia's ruling HDZ opens coalition talks, but the SDP refuses to concede defeat.
5. Question: The above article mentions that the SDP chose not to campaign in Bosnia. Why? Is it because they assumed (perhaps correctly) that they would not get enough votes, so it was in their best interest to focus solely on Croatia?
6. And accused war criminal, Branimir Glavas was re-elected to Parliament.
7. For those who are in Croatia, or who followed the elections more in depth, than lets say, 5 minutes of googling (ahem), what are your opinions on the elections?
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4 comments:
I can understand why the SDP might not want to campaign in Bosnia - after all, it is another, sovereign country. However, Croats in Bosnia can vote and it is not unusual for them to vote for the Bosnian SDP. (The Croats in Bosnia have a Bosnian SDP representative on the three-person federal presidency.)
There's a principle involved (SDP don't like the current diaspora vote system because they don't think people who live in another sovereign state should have such a decisive role in Croatian politics, and because the numbers usually favour HDZ), but might be some internal politics too - SDP's Milan Bandić (the mayor of Zagreb) comes from Herzegovina and SDP might actually have done better than usual from the Bosnian vote.
But a lot of other people in SDP (especially Željka Antunović the deputy leader) can't stand Bandić and don't want to give him an excuse to get more influence in the party....
Interesting thing is that someone had registered ruler party's domain name www.hdz.eu and had used it against them. That webpage was, and still is very popular.
HDZ will most likely win, because that's the party that brought independence to Croatia.
A big number of Bosniaks living in Bosnia have Croatian citizenship, we are talking about at least half a million people.
More Bosniaks in Bosnia hold Croatian citizenship papers than Bosnian Croats. I wonder, have they voted?
They could shift or at least change the balance of political make up of Croatia. But again, Bosniaks are - as usual - staying away. GO VOTE dummy heads!
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