Croatia governing party to seek partners

A five-seat edge for Croatia’s ruling conservative party after Sunday’s election has put the prime minister, Ivo Sanader, in a strong position to lead the country to membership in the European Union in the next four years.
Official results published on Monday, based on a nearly complete vote count, gave 61 seats to Mr Sanader’s Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), compared to 56 for the opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP), before counting the right-leaning Croat diaspora.
But neither party conceded defeat, and both said they were talking with potential coalition partners legislature of around 150 seats. The country’s president, Stjepan Mesic, said he would offer the mandate to whoever had the best chance of forming a solid majority.
As the vote count mounted Sunday night, Mr Sanader welcomed “certain” victory. “Croatian voters have shown that they trust the HDZ and the policies we’ve been implementing in the last four years,” he said.
Before coming to power at the head of his current minority coalition, he transformed the hard-line nationalist movement that had led the ex-Yugoslav republic to independence in the early 1990s into a moderate party aiming for compliance with EU standards.
But the HDZ faced a strong challenge from the equally pro-EU SDP, revitalised by new leadership after the death of the ex-communist reformer, Ivica Racan, earlier this year.
The new leader, Zoran Milanovic, has brought the party its strongest election result yet, although the 4.4 million eligible voters did not warm sufficiently to the SDP’s separate candidate for prime minister, the technocratic former economy minister, Ljubo Jurcic, analysts said. Turnout was 63.5 per cent in Croatia and around 25 per cent in the diaspora.
The roughly 100 000 voters in the diaspora, primarily based in Bosnia-Herzegovina, are expected to cement the HDZ victory with five more seats. Mr Sanader campaigned hard in the neighbouring country, whereas the SDP said it disagreed with participation by voters outside Croatia.
The simplest ruling coalition now would be between the HDZ and the third-place grouping led by a party for farmers, which might demand the ministry of agriculture, a critical post for upcoming EU negotiations, political observers said.
Another narrow-interest group, the pensioners’ party, lost votes apparently to the HDZ after the government paid a backlog of pension debt last week. The SDP has natural allies among smaller centre-left parties, but it would need more than one partner to form a coalition.
Economic policies either way will be aimed mainly at EU accession, which the bloc says will require stronger anti-corruption measures. Croatia is in line to become the 28th EU member, although Mr Sanader’s promises to be ready by 2009 look over-optimistic.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007 http://www.ft.com/