Milanović Experienced Defeat, but HDZ Has No Reason to Celebrate

The preliminary unofficial results of the local elections, according to analysts’ assessments, have shown that Prime Minister and SDP President Zoran Milanović has suffered a defeat, while HDZ is the relative winner but has no reason to celebrate.

This is a relative victory for HDZ and an absolute defeat for Milanović, said analyst Davor Gjenero for Hina. He assessed that SDP has so far performed relatively well in large cities, but now in these elections is paying the price for the incompetence of its president, who he believes has significantly contributed to the destabilization of the party in Zagreb and opened completely unnecessary fronts in Istria, Dubrovnik, and several other cities.

Therefore, Gjenero concluded, SDP is becoming a political minority, for example in Istria, where it has so far participated as a partner in the majority.

In local elections, according to him, HDZ always achieves a relative victory because it always wins the largest number of mandates in municipal and city assemblies, as well as the most mayoral and city mayor positions. The reason for this, he says, is that the local government system is highly fragmented, with small rural areas prevailing.

Žarko Puhovski also agrees that Milanović has suffered two personal defeats: in Istria in the elections for the Istrian prefect and in Zagreb for mayor because his decisions were contrary to the decisions of party branches. SDP, he believes, performed very poorly in Dubrovnik, while HDZ did well in Zagreb. HDZ has gained everything that is not significant, namely counties that have the least impact on the everyday life of citizens, but it allows the party to speak of success, said Puhovski.

Among independent candidates, according to him, the list of Milan Bandić recorded great success, while the Croatian Labourists performed much worse than expected.

Puhovski believes that the public opinion polling in the case of the Zagreb City Assembly was incorrect. Bandić’s ‘superior quality list’ was predicted to receive 10 percent, yet according to the election results, he is still on equal footing with the leading SDP. The votes won open up a very elegant coalition opportunity for Bandić that would lead to him having the city assembly on his side, said Puhovski.

Communication advisor Aleksandra Kolarić assessed that SDP has experienced a shipwreck. She stated that these local elections were primarily elections about the SDP government. Kukuriku voters stayed at home, and the result of that is the loss of the majority in major cities, concluded Kolarić.

HDZ, she says, has defended most of its existing positions in counties and cities and can be satisfied with that, but there is no significant step forward, believes Kolarić. She thinks that Milanović has ‘brought Bandić back from the dead’, who is leading overwhelmingly in the elections for the mayor of Zagreb.