ivo@reporters.net on Wed, 5 Jan 2000 20:06:51 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> Cautiously positive results of Croatian elections |
The coalition of six parties won a majority in Croatian parliament. The defeat of HDZ was foreshadowed for months and when Tudjman died it was bound to happen. Voters were primarily dissatisfied with the economic ruin to which HDZ drove Croatia. Only those who do not live in Croatia, and still romanticize HDZ as the party responsible for Croatian independence, voted overwhelmingly for Tudjman's dying party. I say dying because HDZ itself became an opportunistic coalition of three factions (Seks, Granic and Pasalic). However, I would be cautious about announcing this as a landslide victory. The two leading parties in the coalition (HSLS and SDP) won 57% of the seats. The good news is that they have majority, but the "other" news are that we cannot tell that the representatives who come from different backgrounds and have different political agendas would be able to agree on voting together to preserve that advantage of having the majority. Meanwhile, Croatia is in the economic ruin (a little better, but still pretty much the same as the rest of the post-Yugoslav world with the exception of Slovenia). Whole industries were driven to bankcruptcy, others were sold at bargain to multi-national corporations, pensions are late, unemployment is high, the middle class is shrinking - Croatia shows all the trends of becoming a "third world" country. There is no guarantees yet that the new politicians are going to be less corrupted than the old ones. Now the presidential elections are coming. The six parties coalition's SDP leader Ivica Racan is the candidate for the prime minister and HSLS leader Drazen Budisa is the candidate for the president. Racan was a very vocal opponent of the scope of presidential powers under Tudjman. Now he seems to be a little less concerned about that. He, however, may renew his concerns if he and Budisa start disagreeing if or when they get elected to their positions of power. So, on a cautious note: it is encouraging to see democratic elections (however exquisitely complicated and elaborate for a small country) work in Croatia, it is a great relief to see the party of crooks (HDZ) lose, but we shall wait a little to see how the new set- up will work before getting overly excited. ivo # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net