The Croatians punished historical parties and discomposed the right wing

The victory of Kukuriku coalition is not as splendid as it should be keeping in mind the way of delivering it on the silver plate.

Kukuriku coalition got several more votes than the joining independent parties four years ago. Considering all the negative campaign against HDZ and the efforts of Mladen Bajic and Dinko Cvitan helping them, the fact that they haven’t improved their results since 2007 is in fact unsatisfying for the left coalition.

On the other hand, HDZ can even claim their almost fifty mandates as a success, taking into account the entire burden they had to carry into the election.

But the real losers of the elections are three historical Croatian parties.

The oldest Croatian party HSP hasn’t been elected to Parliament, and the election results have shown that the coalition with other similar parties would bring them even 10 mandates. Five or seven per cent of votes in each election unit don’t create one parliamentary mandate and this is all the result of Ante Dapic’s comeback into politics. As he didn’t manage to destroy HSP at the last elections, he came back to finish the job. This time he succeeded with the assistance of well intentioned but completely lost Danijel Srb.  

HSS, the party of the great tradition, hardly survived. The famous party of Radic brothers got merely a few representatives in the Croatian Parliament and this can be the recommendation for Josip Friscic to retire. And the last chance for HSS to escape the extinction. And that wouldn’t be right because of the tradition and also because of Croatian peasants. They are not anything else but the continuity of the sad strategy of HSP. With the wounded HDZ, they should have tried to present themselves as the new leaders of the right wing and should have united the HSP members when they were not able to do it on their own.  

The results have shown that such a coalition would bring more than 10 mandates for sure, and HSS could have initiated such a coalition and in that way make their results triple. They could have also create the coalition of the right centre with HSLS, but in that way they would be asked to break up with HDZ much earlier. But the peasants died so that HDZ could survive.

HSLS is a story of its own. The first democratic party of new Croatia started the campaign in a fierce way and so they died hard and alone. They presented a brave economy program; they gathered some interesting people and showed how to reach from 1 per cent to 4 per cent in one year’s period. But their 3 to 4 per cent are so equally dispersed all over Croatia that they couldn’t reach the threshold anywhere.

They have made a mistake because they believed that the Croatians are not interested in political games but they only care about economy issues. Although the brain of Darinko Kosor saw some free space in the right centre, his left-oriented heart didn’t let him go there. The demonization of HDZ meant a big election opportunity for HSLS, but Drazen Budisa was not sufficient to convince the disappointed HDZ members that HSLS is right enough.

The political centre is dying out in Croatia, as the last elections showed as well. The crucial question for HSLS is to choose the direction if they want to survive. The labor party is the proof that choosing the direction is useful.  As the well organized left alternative, they took seven mandates from Kukuriku coalition and could represent the “How to…” manual to all the right and central self-declared leaders. The number of lost votes on the left side is not worth mentioning, especially when compared with the lost votes on the right side.

HRAST and Milan Bandic are unique stories. They were involved in the lost battles from the very beginning and they took two or three per cent of votes in their election units.  

So eventually all these voters from the centre to the right wing gave their votes to Kukuriku coalition although they probably didn’t want to. There are 25 per cent of such voters. They are the ones who won this great victory.

Voting for the right wing which was not united, the Croatians in fact brought the record number of the Parliament seats to the left parties.