Croatia - 2020 parliamentary elections
The law provided citizens the ability to choose their government in free and fair periodic elections held by secret ballot and based on universal and equal suffrage. The most recent parliamentary and presidential elections were held in 2020, and European Parliament elections in 2019. National elections were widely reported to be fair and free of abuses and irregularities.
The Republic of Croatia is a constitutional parliamentary democracy. Legislative authority is vested in the unicameral parliament (Sabor). The president serves as head of state and nominates the prime minister, who leads the government, based on majority support of parliament. The latest presidential election was held in December 2019 with a second round for the top two candidates held on January 5. President Zoran Milanovic was elected by a majority of voters. Domestic and international observers stated that the presidential election and parliamentary elections held on July 5 were free and fair.
Significant human rights issues included: instances of violence against, and intimidation and censorship of, journalists and the existence of criminal libel laws; reported acts of unjustified police violence against irregular migrants, some of whom may have been asylum seekers; corruption; and discrimination and violence against members of ethnic minority groups, particularly Serbs and Roma.
The 2020 elections, due by autumn, were moved up after the major parties agreed to dissolve the outgoing Parliament on 18 May. Prime Minister Plenkovic had stated that “[t]he epidemiological situation is favourable”, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 20 May, President Zoran Milanovic called for elections on 5 July. During the election campaign, the major parties focused on how to boost the economy. Other major electoral issues included social security, minimum wages, and pensions. The elections saw a low turnout of 46.9 per cent, down from 52.59 per cent recorded in 2016.
Croatia’s ruling conservative HDZ (EPP) was the unexpected relative winner of parliamentary elections held on Sunday (5 July) despite the renewed rise of coronavirus infections. However, due to the sudden spike in COVID-19 cases, turnout was only 45.7%, one of the lowest since Croatia’s first democratic elections in 1990.
The ruling conservatives overwhelmingly won Croatia's parliamentary elections held on 05 July 2020 amid a spike in new coronavirus cases as the latest European Union member state leaned further to the right. With over 90 percent of the vote counted, the governing Croatian Democratic Union, or HDZ, won 66 seats in Croatia's 151-seat parliament and was likely to form a new coalition government with smaller right-wing groups. Andrej Plenkovic, the acting prime minister and HDZ leader, praised what he described as a “great result and a great victory.” "Such a result for the HDZ, which is our victory, is not only great, but an obligation,” Plenkovic said. “It is an obligation because we had a tough mandate full of challenges behind us, and challenges ahead of us are even bigger.”
An alliance led by the liberal Social Democratic Party, or SDP, the main opposition party, won 41 seats while in third place is the right-wing Homeland Movement led by folk singer Miroslav Skoro with 16 seats. SDP leader Davor Bernardic conceded the defeat and suggested he would resign the leadership position. “Of course, this is a bad result and I'm ready to go," he said.
The Homeland Movement was recently formed and swiftly gained popularity despite public outrage over some of its staunchly hard-line and nationalist views. The party is believed to have chipped away some of the votes from HDZ, which has dominated the political scene in Croatia since gaining independence from the Serb-led Yugoslavia in 1991.
As was the case in 2016, no party won an outright majority in 2020. The number of women elected nearly doubled from 19 to 35. On 23 July, Parliament approved a new coalition government led by Mr. Plenkovic which comprises the HDZ, the Croatian People's Party – Liberal Democrats (HNS), the Reformists-HSS Brace Radic-Pensioners, and representatives of eight ethnic minorities.
Croatia had faced a surge in coronavirus cases that followed reopening of the country's borders and easing of lockdown rules, struggling to salvage its main source of revenue — tourism along the Adriatic Sea coast. The election turnout was 46 percent, the lowest in the country's 10th parliamentary election since gaining independence from the Serb-led Yugoslavia in the 1990's.
About 3.8 million people were eligible to vote. A country of 4.2 million people, Croatia has kept the COVID outbreak largely under control, reporting 113 deaths and around 3,100 confirmed infections. But Plenkovic was criticized over an outbreak at a tennis tournament organized by top-ranked Novak Djokovic in the coastal town of Zadar. Voters were advised to take their own temperature and stay away from polling stations if they had a fever. There was no social distancing or wearing masks during the victory celebrations by the ruling party officials and its supporters.
No laws limit participation of women or members of minority groups in the political processes, and they did participate. By law minority groups are guaranteed eight seats in the 151-seat parliament. Representation of women in major political parties remained low. The law requires that the “less represented gender” make up at least 40 percent of candidates on a party’s candidate list, with violations punishable by a fine. After the 2020 elections, the electoral commission noted that the largest political party, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), failed to comply with the gender law on any of its election lists, while the main opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP) complied in all electoral constituency lists except for two. Many smaller parties also met the threshold. The percentage of women elected to the parliament was 35 of a total of 151 parliamentarians (23 percent), the highest percentage since parliament’s constitution in 1990.
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