The State Electoral Commission reports on the lists of candidates received.
State Electoral Commission (DIP) chairman Branko Hrvatin reported that DIP had received 168 lists of candidates for the parliamentary elections, which is almost half as much as four years ago, when it received 313 candidate lists. There are 162 party lists and only six independent lists, reports Slobodna Dalmacija on October 20, 2015.
The greatest number of lists has been submitted in the first constituency (20 lists), with the smallest number in fifth and ninth constituencies (13). In the eleventh special constituency, where Croatian diaspora will elect three members of parliament, there are 11 electoral lists.
The submission of nominations ended on Monday at midnight. The last list was submitted by Bari Ahmedi, who ran into the hall literally a minute before midnight. “I was collecting signatures until the last moment”, Ahmed explained the reasons for such a late arrival. He will be a candidate in the twelfth special constituency for national minorities, where he wants to represent the Turkish minority. “I am not a politician, this will be my first elections”, Ahmedi said. In the twelfth special constituency, where voters belonging to national minorities will elect eight members of parliament, 34 nominations were submitted.
State Electoral Commission now has 48 hours to check and declare valid the lists for the 12 constituencies. After the lists are published, the pre-election campaign will officially begin. “Even as we were receiving the lists, we were verifying whether they fulfil all the necessary conditions, but tonight and tomorrow we will do another review and publish the lists of candidates for all the constituencies”, Hrvatin said. “I predict that it will happen on October 21 during afternoon.”
The electoral lists could have been submitted since October 6, but the majority of them, a total of 125 lists, were submitted on the last day. During the day, the lists were submitted by the two largest coalitions, SDP’s Croatia Is Growing and HDZ’s Patriotic Coalition, as well as Milan Bandić and his 14-party coalition, Most, and many other. It is estimated that the building of the Croatian Parliament, where DIP has its offices, on Monday received around a thousand people in various party delegations.
Parliamentary elections on November 8 will be the eighth elections of its kind and the first parliamentary elections in which voters will be able to use a preferred vote, which means that in addition to party lists they will be able to vote for a candidate on the list which they prefer.
A total of 151 members of parliament will be directly elected by secret ballot for a term of four years. The ten regular constituencies elect 14 members each, Croatian diaspora elects three members, while ethnic minorities elect eight members of parliament.
