HDZ Expects Election Boost From Bosnian Croats

Bosnian Croat voters have long provided mass support for the right-wing Croatian Democratic Union in elections in Croatia - a tradition that will be repeated again this Sunday.

The leader of Bosnian HDZ Dragan Covic with Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic. Photo: HDZBiH / Facebook.

Bosnian Croats will likely again lend mass support to the main right-wing Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, in Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Croatia, an expert told BIRN, although their participation in elections in the country has fallen in recent years.

“The Bosnian Croats who vote are mostly old people who are very likely to support the HDZ,” Ivana Maric, a political analyst from the think tank Analitika, based in Sarajevo, explained,

The solid result for right-wing parties like the HDZ among Bosnian Croats during Croatian elections is also the result of “good cooperation between the Croatian HDZ and its Bosnian sister party, the HDZBiH,” Maric noted.

Since 1999, Bosnian Croats – as well as all Croats living outside the country – have had the right to elect representatives to the Croatian parliament, as well as the right to vote in the election for the President.

These voters are comprised in a special electoral unit – the 11th – which currently elects three members to parliament.

Over time, the votes of the 11th electoral unit, representing the diaspora, have become a fiefdom of the HDZ, to the point where the main leftwing Social Democratic Party, SDP, does not even field candidates for the 11th unit.

Around 34,800 Bosnian Croats are registered as having the right to vote in Sunday’s elections, Pero Bilusic, first secretary of the Croatian embassy in Bosnia, told the Bosnian news agency FENA on Wednesday.

At the beginning of this week, some of the HDZ candidates for the 11th electoral unit visited several countries, including Bosnia, to present their ideas and meet the voters.

Bozo Ljubic, who is the first name on the list of HDZ candidates for the unit, and therefore very likely to enter parliament, said there is nothing strange in Croats living abroad being entitled to elect representatives in Zagreb.

“This is nothing disputed in this and it is necessary as a way to safeguard those Croats who are not residents in their [own] country,” Ljubic told BIRN.

“It is in the interest of Croatia and of Bosnian Croats to have representatives of Bosnian Croats integrated in institutions in Zagreb,” Ljubic added, stressing that it is of particular importance in the light of Bosnia’s potential accession to the EU, and in order to attract Croatian investors to Bosnia.

However, Maric disagrees, calling the election of representatives to parliament by voters not actually living in the country unustifiable.

She also added that in recent years the role of Bosnian Croats voters in Croatian elections had diminished, partly because of a reduction in the number of places where it is possible for them to cast votes.

“All those who would like to vote for an alternative party or for the SDP have no interest in participating into these elections,” Maric also pointed out.