According to sources, President will wait for 15 days after Parliament is dissolved to officially call new elections, which will take place in September.
President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović said recently that the early parliamentary elections would probably be held on 11 September. According to latest information, she will not make the official decision immediately after the dissolution of Parliament on 15 July, but will wait for a later date, probably 1 August, reports Index.hr on July 7, 2016.
This is significant because it means that electoral deadlines will start running as late as August. That means that parties will have more time to submit their candidate lists, and this suits HDZ and its new leader Andrej Plenković, who will be officially elected on 17 July, because he will have more time to negotiate possible pre-election coalitions with other parties.
The Office of the President argues that this is not the reason for the delayed decision, which they explain with the President’s wish for the election campaign not to coincide with the summer holidays, the anniversary of Operation Storm and the Sinj Alka.
“Even before it was known what will happen in HDZ, the President announced that she would like to distance campaign from the summer holiday season, as far as possible. Also, without the delay, the official campaign would be longer than ever”, said a source from the Office of the President.
If the decision comes into force on 1 August, deadlines will start running at midnight. From that date, parties and independent candidates would have exactly 14 days to submit their candidate lists to the State Election Commission, probably by August 15 at midnight. Upon expiration of that period, the State Election Commission would have two days to publish all valid candidate lists. Then the official election campaign would start, which would end 24 hours before the parliamentary elections. This would mean that the campaign would last until 9 September at midnight.
The voting itself would take place on 11 September from 7 am to 7 pm. The first results would be known a few hours after the polling stations close.
