Milanovic to be proposed as a Speaker of the Parliament cadidate
Every time I sit down to write yet another story about the Croatian elections I think of the standard line used in every infomercial “But wait, there’s more!” since every new day brings new twists and turns. December 20, 2015 was no different. After the president of HDZ Tomislav Karamarko left the negotiations last night, and president of MOST stated that this means HDZ is out of the game and will not be in the new government, we woke up to yet another turn worthy of a Mexican telenovela. MOST’s National committee decided to invite HDZ back to the negotiations just as they did when SDP turned them down the first time, since, as they explained, that was only fair.
Confused? Don’t worry, we all are, no matter how many years we’ve been covering political stories in Croatia. For that reason, here at Total Croatia News, we decided to wait until the end of the day to give you a full report on new developments instead of writing a new story every 15 minutes since that’s the average rate at which new developments seem to be appearing at the moment. So, here is the overview of the 42nd post election day.
First shock of the day came from MOST after their National council unanimously decided o re-open the doors for HDZ just in case they want to join the negotiations again. This decision was announced just minutes before SDP was scheduled to arrive to the meeting. Moving on.
Day continued with Karamarko’s statement live on Croatian National Television that he was betrayed by Milanović since they both agreed to reject MOST’s proposal, adding later for RTL that he is also disappointed with Božo Petrov. He retracted both statements only few hours later. When he was asked whether they will indeed return to the negotiations, Karamarko said “There is a line I will not cross. We quit the negotiations with MOST yesterday and we are no longer participating in that procedure. I didn’t agree with a three-partite government I was only ready to discuss it”.
After the meeting between MOST and SDP was concluded, press reported that MOST finally agreed to propose their leader Božo Petrov as the PM candidate while Večernji List added that they also agreed that Zoran Milanović will be the new Speaker of the Parliament. As for official statements, both parties said to wait until tomorrow which is of course understandable considering they gave HDZ 24 hours to reconsider their proposal.
Any less confused now? Neither are we. Let’s just see what kind of a twist we wake up to tomorrow morning.
