ZAGREB, November 15, 2019 – Presidential candidate Zoran Milanović said on Thursday that the decision to hold the presidential elections on December 22 was “thievery and a disgrace,” accusing the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) of attempting to reduce the number of citizens going to the polls and to ‘kill’ the campaign for the second round of the election by timing it during the holiday season.
Milanović said in a Facebook post that he condemned the government’s decision to hold the first round of the election on December 22, referring to the decision as “thievery and a disgrace” for three reasons.
“HDZ wants to reduce the number of people who will vote both on December 22 in the first round – when all those the HDZ has forced to emigrate to Ireland have not returned to Croatia yet – and on 5 January when more than 100,000 voters are on holiday with their families and children, who have saved for the entire year and will not be able to return to Croatia to vote in the second round,” Milanović wrote.
He said that that was deliberately killing the campaign for a possible second round because it has been set for the holiday season “in an effort to hide all the emptiness of the HDZ candidate.”
Milanović claimed that this deviates from the practice and rules that Jadranka Kosor too stuck to when in 2009 the first round of the election was called for the period between Christmas and New Year.
He concluded that Prime Minister Andrej Plenković’s aim was to prevent citizens from choosing a better Croatia.
Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Thursday evening that the Social Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Zoran Milanovic’s statement that the decision to hold the presidential election on December 22 was “thievery and a disgrace” was actually “an interesting signal of his weakness” as a candidate.
“As far as I know, presidential elections in Croatia are regularly held ahead of the New Year. The calendar has been such since President Franjo Tuđman died in December 1999,” Plenković recalled.
Since 1990, five presidential elections have been held. The third presidential elections were held on 24 January 2000 after Tuđman died on 10 December 1999.
The last elections for the head of state were held on 28 December 2014 (the first round) and 11 January 2015 (the second round) when the incumbent Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović defeated the then President Ivo Josipovic.
“This candidate has a lot of problems and is full of fear,” Plenković said, predicting that the incumbent president would win the second term in office.
More news about presidential elections can be found in the Politics section.
