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Nationalist Democratic Union Party wins Croatian elections


The World Today - Tuesday, 25 November , 2003  12:24:17

Reporter: Mark Tamhane

HAMISH ROBERTSON: More than a decade after Yugoslavia began to fall apart there's concern about a possible return to instability in the Balkans, with the election of the right-wing, ultra-nationalist Democratic Union Party in Croatia.

The HDZ, as the Party is known, swept back into power in weekend parliamentary elections, defeating the reformist pro-Western centre-left coalition, which has ruled the former Yugoslav republic since the year 2000.

The HDZ is insisting that it's changed the xenophobic platform it pursued under its founder, the autocratic Franjo Tudjman.

Some observers believe the return to power of the HDZ could bring and end to Croatia's moves to join the European Union and slow down its often halting cooperation with bodies like the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.

Mark Tamhane reports.

(music and singing)

MARK TAMHANE: A raucous wedding party winds its way through the alleyways of historic Porec, on Croatia's Adriatic Coast.

Along the touristy coastal strip, Croatia appears to have once again become the friendly and popular holiday destination that delighted visitors from both Western and Eastern Europe before the collapse of Yugoslavia.

So could the return of the nationalistic HDZ to power signal a return to the instability that wracked the Balkans during the 1990s?

Not so says Ivo Sanader, the HDZ leader, who is almost certain to become Croatia's next prime minister.

IVO SANADER: I'm not interested in the past. My political activism and work is fully concentrated and focussed on the Croatian future, and I am interested in the Croatian future. Vote me and the Party that I lead can do for all Croatian people, all Croatian citizens, how can we lead Croatia into the UN, NATO, those are the main objectives of my interest.

MARK TAMHANE: Peter Galbraith was the United States first ambassador to the newly independent Croatia in the 1990s. He says the HDZ under Mr Sanader bears little resemblance to the xenophobic Party led by the late Franjo Tudjman.

PETER GALBRAITH: A senator whom I know very well, he was the deputy foreign minister and for a brief time Franjo Tudjman's chief of staff, is cut from an entirely different bolt of cloth. He is a moderate, an academic. He has a vision of the HDZ as a European, conservative Christian democratic party, and he has taken steps to change HDZ positions on key issues.

He's saying things that simply were unthinkable in Franjo Tudjman's time. For example, in the campaign he was calling for the return of ethnic Serbs to Croatia, that is people who fled the country between '91 and 1995, and he talked about restoring property to them. He talks about cooperating fully with the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, whereas Franjo Tudjman not only didn't want to cooperate, but himself almost certainly was going to be indicted had he lived.

MARK TAMHANE: The European Union, which Croatia desperately wants to join, has reacted cautiously to the HDZ's stunning return to power after four years in the political wilderness. Brussels says it will judge Croatia's new government by its actions.

Peter Galbraith says the return of the HDZ to power also should not be taken as a sign that there's a resurgence of unhealthy nationalistic sentiment in Croatia. It's simply that the ruling centre-left coalition failed to deliver improvements to the country's moribund economy.

PETER GALBRAITH: Croatia took a full decade of HDZ rule to put Croatia into the mess that the Social Democrats found it in and they couldn't climb out, and so there was a sense of public impatience, and in some other areas notably in dealing with corruption the SDP didn't do as much as it promised to do.

Sanader is going to have a tough job and I don't know that he's going to be able to turn the country around. So I would expect, all things being equal, that he will find that he hasn't delivered as much as he promised and he's going to face a tough vote in four years.

HAMISH ROBERTSON: The former US ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, ending that report by Mark Tamhane.