Conservative opposition leads in Croatia election

Preliminary official results in Croatia’s November 8 parliamentary elections show the conservative opposition defeating Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) in a ballot widely seen as a referendum on his handling of the refugee crisis after failing to implement economic reforms.

The conservative opposition Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) narrowly won the country’s first election since joining the EU, according to the State Electoral Commission on Monday.

But the big victor has been the three-year-old Most party which took 19 seats and may emerge as the kingmaker in a future coalition.

Milanovic says his party deserves another four-year mandate because the economy, which is heavily reliant on tourism, has started to grow again after six years of recession that wiped out about 13 percent of national output. “The key is to reform bureaucracy and open jobs”, said political sciences student Fabijan, 21, at a Most party rally earlier this week.

“At the moment it is quite hard to say which side will be favored by the smaller parties”, political analyst Viseslav Raos said.

“Across the Bridge to a new government”, declared the front-page headline on largest circulating newspaper, Vecernji list, while the influential daily Jutarnji list said: “Most decides on a new government”, AFP reported.

Croatian bonds have fallen this year, with the yield on the country’s euro-denominated debt due in 2025 trading at 4.292 percent on Friday in Zagreb, from 3.246 percent when it was issued in March.

“We know that, as things stand now, we control the majority in the parliament”, he told national broadcaster HRT. m ” A new election is much cheaper than an incapable government”, he said.

The HDZ was ousted in 2011 amid a series of unprecedented scandals involving its former leader and former prime minister Ivo Sanader. The government of Milanovic has faced wide spread criticism for freely allowing the migrants, by the conservatives who have indirectly made clear their agenda to deploy the army to the border to stop the migrant flow. The country has become a transit hub for migrants leaving the Middle East and traveling to Western Europe, and many Croatians have memories of their own refugees fleeing the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. “They have a better coalition potential among the smaller parties”.