Višnja Starešina: Major Electoral Protest Against Clientelist Governance in Croatia

The fundamental feature of these local elections – demand for change. Changes in local authorities, whatever they may be, have occurred throughout Croatia or nearly occurred in previously impregnable strongholds of the old political establishment. They are politically and ideologically diverse in different environments. However, the common denominator and the main driver of change is the protest against clientelist-managed cities, municipalities, and counties. For voters who turned out for the elections, it was not crucial what the ‘new’ candidates were like and what they advocated; it was important to them that the ‘old’ ones left power.

In Zagreb, the main organizers of the protests against former mayor Milan Bandić and his way of governing the city were recognized as ‘new’. The convincing victory of the Možemo! platform, formed from a network of left-green associations, and the election of Tomislav Tomašević as mayor of Zagreb is a complex political phenomenon. It was a seriously managed integrated project of domestic and foreign sponsors and mainstream media, so their victory was not particularly surprising. However, the main asset of that convincing victory was the perception that they were the most different from the previous clientelist way of governing the city.

Istrian Unification Against the Old

The most obvious example of uniting everything new in a protest vote against the old has become Istria. After the first round of elections, it was surprising that in most cities and municipalities, the IDS candidates, including the candidate for prefect Boris Miletić, had to go to a second round at all.

Already in the first round, the IDS candidate in Vodnjan convincingly lost, along with his list, to Edi Pastrovicci, an independent candidate of a group of voters. Interestingly, he was firmly supported by the founders of Vodnjan’s Infobip, one of Croatia’s most successful IT companies. In the second round, when all ideologically and politically diverse opposition united to break the IDS’s clientelist strongholds, the IDS lost the cities of Pula, Buzet, and Pazin, and almost the county. The director of the Pula gymnasium and citizens’ candidate Filip Zoričić became the mayor of Pula, with the enthusiastic support of the local SDP and Možemo!, while the IDS members smeared him as too – right-wing. In Buzet, the former IDS politician Damir Kajin re-emerged as the new mayor, and in Pazin, the mayor became Suzana Jašić from Možemo!.

The dismantling of old party strongholds and their strongmen also occurred in other parts of Croatia. The previously untouchable Varaždin prefect Radimir Čačić was defeated by the ‘new’ HDZ candidate Anđelko Stričak, who previously had no chance against the established HNS and HSLS nomenclature in some earlier elections. In relation to the previous management structure of Osijek, the HDZ candidate Ivan Radić emerged as new. And in the previously HDZ-held Split, his mayoral candidate was convincingly defeated by the new Ivica Puljak, which until recently was completely unimaginable. In this attack of the new on the party strongholds, Rijeka doctor and former director of KBC Davor Štimac seriously shook the SDP’s Rijeka stronghold, where the same party has been in power since 1945.

The Homeland Movement at a Crossroads

The HDZ, on the other hand, suffered the greatest blows in its traditional Dalmatian strongholds. In addition to Split, it convincingly lost the Šibenik-Knin County to the former mayor of Knin Marko Jelić, who is slowly building, expanding, and strengthening his political list, having politically started in the youth of the HDZ. Zadar, where the HDZ was previously untouchable, is now in question, and from now on, if it wants to retain power, it will have to find common ground with Enio Marasović Richard, whose list was created as a political satire against the previous management of Zadar.

In addition to showing that Croatian voters at the local levels are fed up with the old authorities, regardless of their political color, and that they are particularly tired of their clientelism, these elections have also opened some processes of forming and articulating alternatives. Možemo! has already made the SDP quite anachronistic. The Homeland Movement, with the victory of Ivana Penava in Vukovar and a decent result for Miroslav Škoro in Zagreb, has occupied a large part of the political space in city councils and county assemblies, especially in Slavonia. Now it is at a political crossroads. They can revolve around old political themes and help Plenković and Milanović marginalize them into the niche of right-wing radicals, following the example of the German AfD. And they have the opportunity to modernize politically, capitalize on the demands for change, and become the Croatian version of Macron’s movement La République en marche (The Republic on the Move). 

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