ZAGREB, August 9, 2019 Political analysts Davor Gjenero and Žarko Puhovski have described President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović’s decision to announce her candidacy for a second term in office in the Hrvatski Tjednik weekly as “a very odd and panicky decision” and “an attempt to solicit support from the right-wing electorate.”
In an interview with the weekly, which the analysts consider to be a newspaper of the far-right, President Grabar-Kitarović announced that she would run for president for the second time.
Political analyst Davor Gjenero told Hina on Friday that Grabar-Kitarović’s decision to give an interview to a media outlet such as Hrvatski Tjednik was “odd”.
“The President’s decision to speak to such a paper, which has been treating her very unfairly lately, is very odd. Jeopardising one’s position among voters of the political centre is not clever because elections are not won with votes from the margin of the political arena,” said Gjenero.
He noted that the weekly in question “represents political views that are not part of constitutional parliamentarism” and that its view were rather extreme.
In her interview with the weekly, Grabar-Kitarović also commented on the “For the homeland ready” salute, after the interviewer asked her if “it is not abnormal that the salute under which Vukovar was defended is compromised while the red star is not”. She said that “no symbol under which Vukovar was defended can be compromised.”
Gjenero believes that this topic should be given less and less attention. “It should be moved from the agenda and not be discussed that way,” he said, adding that ignoring the topic would make discussions about it stop.
Political analyst Žarko Puhovski said that Grabar-Kitarović’s move was a sign of panic following the emergence of another presidential candidate on the right side of the political spectrum.
“This is yet another attempt by her to solicit support from the right-wing electorate, whose support until recently was reserved only for her, but now a man has emerged with good chances among right-wing voters, so she is forced to address them more actively,” Puhovski told Hina, referring to presidential candidate Miroslav Škoro.
Describing Hrvatski Tjednik as a right-wing paper, he said that by announcing her candidacy in that paper she had given weight to it because all the other media outlets had carried her statement.
He said that her interview “could be an act of damage control among right-wing voters” but that the real question was if she could win the election without the help of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) whose approval ratings had been declining.
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