Party conference elected members of the Presidency and Main Committee.
On Saturday, SDP held a party conference with delegates electing a new 17-member party Presidency, new members of the Main Committee, as well as four party vice-presidents, reports Index.hr on December 4, 2016.
New members of the Presidency elected based on regional quotas are: Rajko Ostojić, Boris Lalovac, Bojan Glavašević, Ivana Posavec Krivec, Mihael Zmajlović, Siniša Hajdaš Dončić, Vedran Babić, Domagoj Hajduković, Biljana Borzan, Zlatko Komadina, Peđa Grbin, Arsen Bauk, and Franko Vidović. Four candidates who entered the Presidency thanks to a large number of votes are: Predrag Matić, Ivo Jelušić, Nenad Livun and Romana Jerković.
Among new members of the Presidency, six of them did not support the new party president Davor Bernardić in his election campaign. They are: Boris Lalovac, Bojan Glavašević, Mihael Zmajlović, Biljana Borzan, Peđa Grbin and Predrag Matić. Their election was greeted with a loud applause by delegates, with some seeing the move as a step toward party unity.
Six of the newly-elected members of Presidency decided to run for four party vice-president positions. Delegates gave their support to Zlatko Komadina, Boris Lalovac, Rajko Ostojić and Peđa Grbin. Komadina received 792 votes, Lalovac 766 votes, Ostojić 676 votes, and Grbin 662 votes. The two candidates who have not been elected are Siniša Hajduković and Predrag Matić.
SDP president Davor Bernardić made a speech at the end of the day-long conference and said that the party demonstrated its internal democratic strength. “The winner is democracy within SDP, and starting from tomorrow we need to have positive energy that will inspire the best in Croatia. The most important thing is never to give up”, he said.
The conference marked the end of the election process within SDP, after the party lost two parliamentary elections in just ten months. After the two defeats, then party president and former Prime Minister Zoran Milanović announced he would not run for the next term. He has since not appeared very often in public, although he is still the president of the SDP Parliamentary Group. He announced that he would leave politics after the new party leadership is elected and go into private business.
The first major test for the new leadership of the main opposition party will be local elections which will be held in May 2017. The party will have to quickly select its candidates for mayoral and county prefect positions, since many of its opponents have started campaigning a long time ago.
At the national level, the party is expected to spend at least the next four years in opposition, since the current parliament’s term runs until late 2020.
