Let Croatia be a shiny star on the European sky
On Sunday January 10th 2010 people of Croatia have elected their third president. Ivo Josipović, law professor, composer and member of social democratic party won elections in a landslide victory with 60.26% of votes (out of 2.3 million).
This election race is by many parameters very different from any other we had before. First unusual fact is that government decided to have elections on 27th of December 2009 (first round) and 10th of January 2010. (second round) which is highly unusual since elections and campaign were situated in the middle of Christmas and new year festivities, with second round coliding with school holidays when plenty of Croats decide to go for a winter vacation. Second unusual fact is that this was by far the longest campaign we had in last 20 years, 51 days in total (37 for the first and 14 for the second round).
Unusual choice of election dates is partialy explained by the fact that ruling party in Croatia (HDZ – Croatian democratic union, which is conservative right party) decided that selected dates are ideal for croats living outside of croatia (who have voted for HDZ in all previous elections) are visiting homeland for the holidays (and middle class which is unfavorable to HDZ is going to alps for a week ok skiing). Longer campaign also means more expensive campaign which was supposed to go in favour of strong (party) candidates.
Altogether 12 candidates meet the census of just 10.000 signatures which are required. Interestingly, just three of them were considered as „left and left center“candidates while all the others were competing in a really crowded right side of electorate. This basically went directly into favor of Ivo Josipović, candidate of SDP (left center party) who started with his campaign early and established himself as a clear candidate of the left. While this made him a clear favorite of the first round, it was really unclear if he was able to collect the center and right votes of the electorate in order to win the presidency, simply because right parties are strong in Croatia and have won all but single elections in 2000. To make things worse, he was very early marked as a „weak“, „indecisive“, „bleak“ candidate which was perceived by all as a huge disadvantage when you decide to run in a country which history (but present as well) is filled with charismatic and autocratic leaders.
On the right side of the electorate, strongest candidates were Andrija Hebrang (HDZ member, former minister of health and defense, long standing and well known politician), Nadan Vidošević (recent dissident from HDZ and head of Croatian Chamber of commerce for 15 years), Dragan Primorac (recent dissident from HDZ and former minister of education in government of former prime minister Ivo Sanader who suddenly resigned in July of 2009), and to make things worse for Josipović, fourth candidate was Milan Bandić, long standing major of Croatian capitol Zagreb, well known politician and SDP dissident.
First round of elections was fairly decent with some exceptions, and most of the fighting went between four candidates mentioned above since they were trying to insure their pass to second round of elections, so they were not allowed to waste their time on the candidate of the left Ivo Josipović who was at all times in solid double digit advantage over them. This of course did not stop them to try to implicate him in a number of affairs and other character smearing events which included allegations that he was the one who wrote 75% of the indictments against Croatian generals (whereas in truth he was employed by Croatian government to defend Croatian interests on international war tribunal in the Hague), or that he was the mastermind against ZAMP which is Croatian organization for protecting intellectual property - specially musicians (it is not quite clear why is this launched as a „luggage“ for Josipović since ZAMP is legal organization which collects and distributes royalties and as such is based on laws which are standard in EU), or that he tried and failed to became a judge in Hague (in Croatia Hague is a synonym for war crimes tribunal, while Ivo Josipović was nominated for another court which is also based in Hague: International Criminal Court).
Ivo Josipović on a campaign bus checking facebook
Fight between the candidates was also fierce and accusations of domestic violence (toward Dragan Primorac), non proportional and unexplained property (for Nadan Vidošević), influencing public tenders (against Andrija Hebrang) was all over the newspapers. In the end, highly populist major of Zagreb entered second round of elections with 14,83% of the vote vs. Ivo Josipović who won 32.42% of the electorate.
Campaign became ugly just seconds after election commission announced first unofficial results when major of Zagreb accused Ivo Josipović that he is „a puppet on a remote control of party chairman Zoran Milanović“. In the next two weeks Milan Bandić campaign spent huge amounts of time and effort in attempt to hurt Ivo Josipović by trying to implicate him in a bank scandal from late nineties where Ivo Josipović managed to withdraw approx 130.000 DEM from one of the banks more than three months before it collapsed, or that he tried to portray him as a party candidate who is going to return communism and single party system to Croatia (!?).
Unfortunately for Milan Bandić, his campaign tactics did not gain any significant traction and his constant accusation simply helped consolidate support for Ivo Josipović which received public support from all but two parliament parties and vast majority of civil society. Milan Bandić did not managed to persuade voters that he is peoples candidate while he received a number of huge donations from well known tycoons and completely unknown people, his lack of transparency and easily noticed disproportion between number of ads (in TV, radio, print) did not help either.
As far as media landscape is concerned, it is clear now that census of just 10.000 signatures for valid presidential candidate is too low and that we have too many candidates in the race and some of them (at least half) did not have basic resources to compete for president’s position. Our media coverage suffers also since Croatia have a law which grants all candidates equal access to the media which made debates completely unwatchable because there is a little chance to lead meaningful discussion with 12 candidates in the studio.
Regardless of the fact that Ivo Josipović won elections with a landslide victory, it is wrong to say that victory was easy or that election result was insured well before election date. This presidential race was by far longest, dirties and most expensive so far and lessons learned will hopefully lead to the changes in electoral procedure for the future elections.
As far as Ivo Josipović is concerned, he will be sworn as third president of Republic of Croatia on 18th of February. Croatia will get well educated, internationally recognized professor of law, distinguished composer and social democrat with a fight against corruption as a central point of his political agenda. Hopefully, he will also be a president who will lead Croatia into EU in couple of year’s time and his efforts will most likely make Croatia a new and shiny star on European sky.
