Some of the names sound very familiar.
Andrej Plenković, who was just yesterday elected as new president of HDZ, has already decided who his closest associates will be, report Večernji List and Index.hr on July 18, 2016.
Although Plenković cannot change party deputy president, party vice presidents and members of the presidency, he can nominate three party secretaries: secretary general, political secretary and international secretary. Among the names being mentioned there are some surprises.
According to reports, new HDZ secretary general will be Gordan Jandroković, Davor Ivo Stier will be the political secretary, while current international secretary Miro Kovač, who is also Croatia’s current Foreign Minister, will remain in his post.
It was expected that the new HDZ president would propose new secretaries, since the current ones were chosen by former party president Tomislav Karamarko. Domagoj Ivan Milošević will be dismissed as secretary general, while Domagoj Maroević, who was named as political secretary in the last days of the Karamarko era, apparently never even appeared at the HDZ headquarters and has since resigned.
Gordan Jandroković resigned several weeks ago as vice chairman of the HDZ Parliamentary Group and he objected to the vote of no confidence against Prime Minister Orešković, which was at the time launched by Karamarko and HDZ. He warned his colleagues that the party would not be able to form a new ruling majority and that HDZ would cause early parliamentary elections. He is known as a person who strongly supports all HDZ presidents until he feels their term might be coming to the end and then he swiftly switches his alliance to the new leader. He was close associate of Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who appointed him as Foreign Minister in 2008. Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor appointed him Deputy Prime Minister in 2010. During Karamarko’s term as HDZ president, Jandroković was member of party presidency.
It was expected that MEP Davor Ivo Stier would get one of the posts since he is one of the closest associates of Plenković and was the spokesperson of his campaign for intraparty elections. Miro Kovač has somewhat surprisingly survived as international secretary, even though he allegedly is not close to Plenković.
In other HDZ related news, one of the founders of HDZ Vladimir Šeks has confirmed to the press that he would again get actively engaged in HDZ politics, but he did not want to explain in what way. He strongly supported Plenković’s candidacy for party president. During the last 26 years, he was almost always a part of HDZ leadership and was the Speaker of Parliament from 2003 to 2007. However, he was not in good relations with Karamarko.
At this moment, HDZ presidency is meeting to discuss preparations for the upcoming early parliamentary elections, drawing up electoral lists and possible coalition partners.
