ZAGREB, August 26, 2019 – Ivan Vrdoljak, the leader of the Croatian People’s Party (HNS), a junior partner in the ruling coalition, said that he would not support any of the presidential hopefuls who have so far announced their candidacy for the forthcoming presidential election in the country.
Vrdoljak said at a news conference that all the current candidates “are too much left or too much right oriented”.
The HNS can give support only to the “civil centrist policies and conduct”, and that means no one at the right or left side of the political spectrum.
In late September, the HNS main committee is expected to decide whether the party will propose its presidential candidate.
Asked by the press about criticism which Milorad Pupovac, who is at the helm of the SDSS party, levelled against Croatia, following the recent Knin incidents, Vrdoljak said that “Milorad Pupovac is not the reason why the masked men raided the cafes and beat Croatian citizens who were watching a TV broadcast of a football match. If they think so, then we have a problem in the society.”
The Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) leader Pupovac has said in an interview with the Sarajevo-based Radiosarajevo.ba web portal that Croatia is turning into a factor of instability in the area of the former Yugoslavia.
Pupovac, whose party is a junior member of the ruling coalition, said in the interview which was published on Saturday, that a state of affairs in the inter-ethnic tolerance in Croatia “is not good”, insisting that intolerance towards other ethnicities is being promoted.
“The political stance of the HNS is minorities’ rights concern the standard of the development of a society, and the job of the majority is to show that we are a modern and progressive nation,” said Vrdoljak at the conference held in Karlovac after a three-day team building gathering of party members.
The HNS will hold an intra-party election convention in the spring 2020, and Vrdoljak said that he would not run for any position in the party. He said he would continue his political career as just s an ordinary member of the party in his hometown of Osijek.
The HNS leader said that the party’s political priority in the coming period is to make sure that salaries of 68,000 employees in the Croatian primary and secondary school system are raised.
He said that the party would advocate an average rise of 600 kuna.
More HNS news can be found in the Politics section.
