Gjenero: I do not believe that Plenković would form a government dependent on right-wing populists

Exit polls usually accurately predict the final election results, but of course, small deviations are possible, although not to the extent that the number of mandates expected by HDZ, which is around 62 mandates, could be achieved, says Davor Gjenero, a political scientist and independent political consultant, commenting on the exit polls of the parliamentary elections.

And without those 62 mandates, Gjenero says, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković is in quite a difficult situation.

– Mathematically, there is a government that can be formed from such an election result. That is a government of HDZ, the Homeland Movement, and two or three minority representatives. There is no chance for a government to be formed in the architecture like those of 2017 and 2020, Gjenero begins, adding that it is also mathematically impossible to form a government with liberal democrats and minorities.

Gjenero continues, stating that he does not believe that Andrej Plenković would form a government dependent on right-wing populists.

– It is more likely that someone else will take the position of the mandate on behalf of HDZ. Also, it does not seem possible to form a minority government led by SDP, and the alternative is the dissolution of parliament, calling new elections, and appointing a government of Milanović’s choice, says Gjenero.

If that happens, we are entering a serious problem.

– This means that we would not have a very long Parliament, nor ten judges of the Constitutional Court, raising the question of how it would be possible in December, when the judges’ mandates expire, to conduct presidential elections and how to conduct repeated parliamentary elections. If that happens, Croatia faces a deep constitutional crisis like the one we feared back in 1990, when Tuđman was dying, and HDZ was not ready to declare him permanently incapacitated. Fortunately, everything ended well then, and whether it will now, we will just have to see, says Gjenero.

I do not believe that Plenković will form a government with the Homeland Movement, due to what has leaked and because he would be politically dependent on them, which is not a position in which he could lead European policy, and I think he would not be interested in that, says Gjenero.

– It is more likely that we will get a right-wing government because politicians do not like repeating elections, but it is hard to say which of those solutions is better. In any case, it seems to me that the period of euro optimism is coming to an end, concludes Gjenero.