Drago Prgomet and Milan Kujundžić will again be members of HDZ.
The HDZ High Honour Court unanimously decided within 15 minutes to recommend that former deputy party president Drago Prgomet and former candidate for HDZ president Milan Kujundžić can return to the party after they submit the request. The Court concluded that there were no obstacles for their return, reports tportal.hr on August 1, 2016.
HDZ will now have two more members, who were until now presidents of two small political parties. After leaving HDZ as deputy party president, when the party was led by Tomislav Karamarko, Drago Prgomet founded HRID, while Kujundžić, who was defeated by Karamarko at the elections for party president in 2012, founded Croatian Dawn party. It will be interesting to see whether they will shut down their parties and whether HDZ will accept their members as well, but it is expected that the majority of them will also return to HDZ since many of them are former HDZ members.
Prgomet and Kujundžić will formally become HDZ members at the next session of the High Honour Court.
Kujundžić said that he “very easily agreed on everything with Andrej Plenković and Davor Stier. I am getting ready for the elections, but we have not yet talked specifically about the candidate lists.” Prgomet and Kujundžić had demanded the democratization of HDZ, but the former party leadership led by Karamarko did not accept their demands.
In addition to Prgomet and Kujundžić, there are rumours that some other former HDZ members could return to the party, including former party president and Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, former Finance Minister Martina Dalić and Ivić Pašalić, controversial advisor to former HDZ president and Croatian President Franjo Tuđman. Kosor said that no one had yet talked with her about the possible return to the party. She was evicted from party membership after Karamarko became president.
As for Ivić Pašalić, in early May, when he was elected president of the Association of Wood Processing Industry, he rejected any possibility of returning to politics. “I am now in private sector in the wood processing industry. Surely, my experience in politics can be useful in this area, but I am not going back into politics”, said Pašalić.
At the elections in November last year, Prgomet was elected to Parliament as candidate of MOST, but he was ejected from the party after it became known that he had met in secret with SDP president Zoran Milanović.
