The Clear And Dangerous Victory

[Ivo Skoric]

http://www.hrt.hr/vijesti/HRT0013.html (in Croatian)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=387905
5
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/11/24/croatia.election.reut/i
ndex.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3230260.stm
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=518&ncid=732&e=4&u=/ap
/20031124/ap_on_re_eu/croatia_elections

As of Monday morning (Nov 24, 11 am) ballots from 95.63% polling 
places in Croatia were processed, accodring to the president of the 
State Elections Authority, Ivica Crnic. The most important 
preliminary results are as follows:

68.67% of registered voters voted, and the independent observers 
(http://www.gong.hr/eng/gong.asp?cat=1&subcat=6&cl=242) reported just 
a few irregularities, lending credibility and legitimacy to the 
results as the true expression of the will of the people in Croatia.

Itemized results should be available on the official site - 
www.izbori.hr - but their Java/Flash script does not work properly, 
and I cannot pull up the results. Alternatively, you may obtain the 
detailed results assessed by the method of "parallel vote tabulation" 
in .pdf format at this place: http://www.gong.hr/hr/downloads/PVT.pdf

To make the long story short, the HDZ (Croatian version of GOP) won, 
and, it won by a larger margin (60:40) then most of analysts 
expected. HDZ will alone have 62 seats in Sabor (Croatian 
Parliament), while SDP (former communists, now in search for 
identity) with all their coalition partners together (IDS, Libra, LS) 
will have a total of 43 seats. This is consistent with AP and Reuters 
reports, but not with BBC and CNN reports. BBC reports smaller margin 
of victory (51.7%) and 72:65 seats, while CNN reports 75:63 seats. 
Croatia's parliament has 140 seats and 10 seats are allocated for 
minorities representatives 
(http://www.izbori.hr/sabor/propisi/izborZast_eng.pdf), i.e. BBC's 
and CNN's counts do not compute. But in any case, the HDZ won. Racan 
already conceded defeat.

Croatians living abroad (about 400,000 voters) had a worse turn-out, 
but cast the votes along the same general lines. Traditionally they 
voted more to the right end of the political spectrum. Contrary to 
the popular misconception their vote is not given enough gravity 
under complex Croatian electoral rules to really swing elections to 
the right. The truth is, the 59.86% of them voting for HDZ would not 
put HDZ in power, if citizens in Croatia did not vote the same way. 

SPD was consistently lagging behind HDZ in 8 of 10 Croatia's 
electoral districts, with particularly bad showings in districts of 
Osijek, Slavonski Brod, and Zadar. Those 3 districts account for the 
most of the Croatia's territory that was affected by the war in the 
1990-s. Mayor of Zadar proudly hangs larger than life picture of 
general Ante Gotovina, wanted by ICTY for war crimes, but, also, a 
leader of Zadar's defense during the crucial crunch time, at the 
entrance of the ancient walled city. 

The sluggish economy in the war-affected areas in Croatia did not 
pick up yet on the recovery that is visible in cities like Zagreb and 
Dubrovnik. Large swaths of territory in those 3 districts are turned 
into abandoned wasteland, where bullet-holes still dot facades of 
buildings nearly a decade after the war is over. Unsurprisingly, that 
made an impact at the ballot box.

Curiously, the results of the Internet poll - "How do you feel about 
the results of election?" - conducted by http://monitor.hr, are 
completely different from the results of elections. While about 60% 
of Croats voted for change of government to the right, now nearly 60% 
of them feel disappointed and sad about the results.

I think that this discrepancy should be taken rather seriously, 
particularly by those Americans who hope that the Internet 
constituency will beat Bush in 2004. The fact is that the Internet 
constituency are mostly young people, that often do not bother to 
vote, sometimes are not yet eligible to vote, and generally are not 
the majority of people, especially in the less wired society, like 
Croatia.

Group of people that brought upon Croatia the 60:40 victory for HDZ, 
perhaps, do not even know for the Internet poll at the monitor.hr 
site. Who, in today's world, has the time to spend a couple of hours 
a day reading and analyzing news, chating on Internet and forming and 
educated political opinion? Mostly those who are still in school, 
those who are unemployed, those who are retired, and those who are 
extremely passionate and who are able to organize their lives so they 
can find time to do that (like me). Unlike Suadi Arabia, Croatia has 
very low natality rate, hence not enough young people to make it an 
issue. Retired people in Croatia are computer illiterate. Unemployed 
are too poor to have a computer and Internet access. And the last 
group is really a tiny minority of activists.

Others get their news generally from glancing over the newspaper 
headlines in public transportation, while thinking about how to pay 
off loans, and from listening to the TV news, while watching over 
kids, paying bills, and preparing dinner. They may vote for Bush 
again in absence of a clear and simple alternative. They voted for 
louder and more assertive Sanader in Croatia, because Racan was just 
perceived too hesitant to lead them. 

That, of course, may be unfortunate for Croatia. Miomir Zuzul, the 
former ambassador to the United States who is likely to be named 
foreign minister, said, "Croatia will be led by a moderate center-
right government over the next four years." Ivo Sanader, who is to 
become the prime minister, said the party had changed and that he 
intended to have Croatia join the European Union and NATO within the 
next two to three years.

But, he has also promised to pursue a sharply pro-Bush foreign 
policy, even offering to send troops to Afghanistan or Iraq, and to 
sign the agreement with the US about not extraditing Americans to the 
ICC. This may be short-sighted in view that American administration 
may change in the next year. Also, HDZ is openly hostile to the 
United Nations tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague - and 
cooperation with the tribunal is part of the criteria for membership 
in the European Union.

The mood in Europe is best described by the following story: this 
weekend Amsterdam banned a concert by Croatian ethno-rock star Marko 
Perkovic Thompson for alledgedly displaying sympathy for the ultra-
right in past and present. The Dutch police used the term 'fascist' 
to describe Thompson. 
http://www.kroatiehrvatska.com/kroatie.php?page=concert.hr&menu=menu_h
r (in Croatian)
http://www.wxs.nl/planet/show/id=67777/contentid=402807/sc=f0b475 (in 
Dutch; see "Concert")
Band's fans were bussed to Rotterdam where a concert was held behind 
closed doors at an undisclosed location. In this elections MP 
Thompson not only lent his voice (and probably vote) to HDZ - he 
posted on his web site a call to Croats to cast their votes do defeat 
'communists'...
http://www.thompson.hr/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&s
id=89 (in Croatian)

In the end, however, it is always economy, stupid. And on that issue, 
both Sanader and Racan are generally deaf-mute. As SDP defeated HDZ 
after Tudjman's death it took over the corrupt and disfunctional 
economy over. Contrary to electoral promises the corruption and the 
garage-sale of the country's strategic assets continued, culminating 
in this year's sale of Croatia's state-owned "big oil" company INA to 
the Hungarian sate-owned "big oil" company MOL. Now, the money that 
Croatia was supposed to earn through that 'deal' got hold up in the 
process due to some technical details...
http://www.vecernji-list.hr/2003/11/05/Pages/FORUM-NAJ.html (in 
Croatian)

Neither Racan nor Sanader offered an idea that in the future things 
would be done any different. People got tired of Racan. My take is 
that Croatia just moved from one disappointing government to another. 
In four years people will be tired of Sanader. And Croatia will be as 
far from Europe as it is today.

I already heard the new nickname for HDZ. The original is Hrvatska 
Demokratska Zajednica (Croatian Democratic Union). The nickname is 
Hrvatska Dobro Zajebana (Croatia Fucked for Good).

ivo