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Four candidates to run for Croatian president

27 December 2014 17:39 (UTC +04:00)

Last poll, conducted from Dec. 11 to 17 by relevant agency Ipsos Puls, showed that Josipovic is supported with 46.5 percent of voters, Grabar Kitarovic 34.9 percent.

The other two candidates, Ivan Vilibor Sincic would be the first choice for 9.2 percent and Milan Kujundzic is supported by 7.2 percent of voters, according to the poll.

Josipovic is supported by his Social Democratic Party (SDP), momentarily the strongest party in the government, by remaining three government parties: liberal HNS (Croatian People's Party), regional IDS (Istrian Democratic Assembly) and HSU (Croatian Pensioners Party), three more parliamentary parties, including Reformists, Labor Party and Enviromental ORaH, and 12 others -- in total 19 parties.

Grabar Kitarovic, currently Assistant Secretary General for Public Policy at NATO and former Croatian Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the United States, is supported beside HDZ by eight parties, out of which HSS (Peasant's Party) and HSP-Ante Starcevic (Croatian Party of Rights Ante Starcevic) have parliamentary status.

At the beginning of the campaign Milan Kujundzic, leader of conservative Hrvatska zora (Croatian dawn), was seen as potential challenger of Josipovic from the right side of political spectrum in the second round, but after campaign started Ivan Vilibor Sincic, until this campaign unknown in public, became more popular.

Kujundzic left the HDZ party in 2013. Before that he was defeated in a second round of elections for HDZ new president in 2012. In 2014 he was chief candidate on the list for the European Parliament formed by six more right parties and lost mandate by several hundred votes. Same group of parties, among which only one has parliamentary status (regional HDSSB, or the Croatian Democratic Assembly of Slavonija-Baranja), decided to support him again in a presidential campaign.

The biggest surprise, Sincic, is candidate of NGO Zivi zid (Human Barrier or 'Living' Wall), which tries to stop evictions of citizens with bank debts they cannot repay. In February 2011 he was one of the co-organisers of so called "Facebook" protest rallies against then ruling HDZ.

On Dec. 28, 2009, Josipovic won the first round of the presidential election among 12 candidates with 32.42 percent of the votes.

So far Croatia was electing president five times and every time the defender was winning a second term: in 1997 late Franjo Tudjman, in 2005 Stjepan Mesic.