Croatia - 2019 President Election
The function of the Croatian president is largely ceremonial apart from a formal role in foreign policy as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and as co-decision maker with the Prime Minister on the naming of many ambassadors and the chief of the intelligence service. The president is the head of state and is elected by direct popular vote for a term of 5 years. The president is limited to serving no more than two terms.
The Croatian parliament in 2000 under an SDP-led government substantially reduced the powers of the presidency in the aftermath of the highly-centralized rule of Croatia's first President Franjo Tudjman.
Despite the reduced stature of the presidency, president Stjepan Mesic by force of his own reputation and gravitas - as Croatia's first Prime Minister, the last president of the former Yugoslavia, and one of the first Speakers of Parliament - was able to wield a great deal of informal authority and act as a check on the power of the government.
However, his successors, were unable to preserve such a level of influence, and the role of the presidency could be increasingly be confined to ceremonial duties. Nonetheless, the presidency undeniably provides the winner with a bully pulpit by which presidents can inject their thoughts into public debate and have some influence in domestic policy.
The incumbent President of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, took office on 19 February 2015 and her term is due to end on 18 February 2020. If Grabar-Kitarovic serves out her term in full until that date, the new presidential term will begin on 19 February 2020 and will be due to end on 18 February 2025. Also, she will be eligible for re-election to a second and final five-year term in this election. Ivo Josipovic, her predecessor as president, is also eligible to run for re-election to a second and final term, as he was defeated in the 2015 elections after serving only one term from 2010 until 2015.
By January 2018, though there are still two years left for presidential elections, several candidates were speculating. The story is further troubled by Zoran Milanovic's response, which does not want to clearly determine if he or she is in the race for Pantovcak. Opposition is slowly forming an initiative to have only one candidate who could win Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic.
Two years before the presidential election, Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic had not said clearly whether she will start the race for the second term, but showed his actions as if he was already in the pre-campaign.
It had been speculating for a long time that an anti-candidate could be former Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic. "I do not think about it and I do not know if I will go to the presidential race, I do not get itching." I went into politics and became president of the party as an outsider, " said Zoran Milanovic.
Just as Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic needed a HDZ support for a successful campaign, Milanovic should have been behind the SDP. In the SDP, their candidate should be elected on the pre-election. "If Milanovic decides to run, I believe that a large part of SDP's will support such a decision, and Milanovic, I think, is acceptable to left and right voters," says Joško Klisovic.
Ivan Sincic was a candidate in 2015 and says he could be in the race again. "I do not think about it, but I have learned not to say hard to say no," says Anka Mrak Taritaš, who believes that the opposition should have one candidate. "If our ultimate goal is that Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic does not enter the second term, we must fight for the final goal, and then less important is who is smarter and has a better candidate," says Mrak Taritaš.
Only four candidates competed in the previous presidential elections. Eleven candidates will be running in the election but opinion polls suggest a tight three-way race between incumbent President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic of the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ); Zoran Milanovic of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SDP), who previously served as prime minister; and independent candidate Miroslav Skoro, a folk singer supported by right-wing parties. But the leading candidates range only from the right to the far-right, leaving few options for the left-wing electorate.
A candidate must win an absolute majority to be declared an outright winner. If, as expected, no contender exceeds the 50 percent threshold, the top two candidates will advance to a January 5 runoff. The powers of the president are limited, mostly holding a representative role abroad and serving as the head of the armed forces. As a result, observers say the presidential campaign has not addressed any serious issues concerning the citizens.
An exit poll published shortly after polls closed in the evening placed Milanovic slightly ahead of his rivals with a 29.58% share of the vote, compared with 26.38% for incumbent Grabar Kitarovic, and Skoro in third on 24.1%. Later on, with 62% of the ballot papers taken into account, indications suggested a similar outcome. If confirmed in the final tally, Milanovic, a former prime minister, and Grabar Kitarovic, who is seeking a second term, would face each other in a final runoff on January 5.
05 January 2020 Runoff
Asked why he thought he would be a better president than prime minister, Milanovic replied that they were two "substantially different jobs." He claimed that, as prime minister, he pulled the country out of a severe crisis, and that HDZ has increased Croatia’s public debt twice as much as his government had. "Even with the Plenkovic government, the public debt has grown by almost 20 billion HRK," Milanovic said, adding that "within a half year it had paradoxically decreased by three billion during the time of Oreškovic."
Milanovic also asserted that his government was "therapeutic for Croatia, relatively fair, free of affairs, imprisonment and indictments." He said that Croatia had entered a period of "economic expansion" during his government. "Then comes Kitarovic, and we get someone who cannot not read, write or speak Croatian (Tihomir Oreškovic). Then Plenkovic shows up and things really haven’t changed much – if at all. We currently live in a time of minimal economic growth," Milanovic emphasized. He added that “we rank last in European countries to completely utilize available EU funds.”
“I have not fulfilled some of my promises, because during my term you could see that some objectives were impossible to achieve or there were other priorities, but this is what I have done,” Grabar-Kitarovic said of her achievements in the first term. "I have saved taxpayers 25 million HRK in five years, which may not seem like much to some people, but if you have a budget that is just over 30 million, then 25 million is a respectable figure," the president added.
The opposition Social Democratic Party's presidential candidate Zoran Milanovic spent 1.5 million kuna on his campaign by December 27 while the ruling Croatian Democratic Union's candidate, incumbent Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, spent 5.4 million kuna. By December 27, Grabar-Kitarovic spent 2.5 million kuna on advertising, whereas Milanovic spent 12,400 kuna. Grabar-Kitarovic received 2.3 million kuna from 347 contributors and Milanovic 813,000 kuna from 50.
On January 4, 2020 the two-day electoral silence came into effect for Croatia. It will end at 7:00pm CET on Sunday, after polling stations close, . On Saturday, the day before an election, and Sunday, election day; the publication of estimates, results and previous unofficial election results are prohibited. This ban also applies to photos, statements and interviews from the two presidential candidates. Social networks are included in the electoral silence as well. Therefore, media and media publishers are expected to remove everything from their program content which represents electoral advertising: including official advertisements, links, image links-ads (banners) which lead to candidates' campaign websites.
Zoran Milanovic won the country's second-round presidential ballot, defeating the conservative incumbent candidate Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic. Milanovic, the leftist candidate and former prime minister, won 53 percent of the votes in the January 5 ballot, according to election authorities. Grabar-Kitarovic, the candidate of the ruling center-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), won 47 percent of the vote.
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