A new Croatian party to contest the elections.
“U Ime Obitelji” Initiative announced on Thursday that for the upcoming parliamentary elections it has formed a new political party named “U Ime Obitelji – Project Homeland”. Their candidates will push for a change to the electoral system, strengthening of families, and fighting corruption and nepotism which hamper the economy, reports Jutarnji List on September 17, 2015.
“In this way, we want to contribute to the democratization of our society, just as we have been doing through our initiative. We want to have our representatives in the parliament who will advocate what we stand for”, said the chairman of the new party Krešimir Planinić.
They will not enter any pre-election coalitions and will have candidates in all parliamentary constituencies. Their candidates will be the people who have already proven themselves. Planinić added that they consider pre-election coalitions to be unfair since they enable parties which do not have the support of citizens to enter the parliament. They are ready to form a coalition after the election, but it will depend on who can be a partner that will share their values. A coalition with SDP and HNS is not possible, said Planinić, “because we do not believe they could become capable, anti-totalitarian and democratic”.
He explained that the party U Ime Obitelji – Project Homeland has been formally established due to the electoral system and the inability of independent lists to go to the polls under the joint name, so they were forced to carry out this formality.
A member of the party presidency Željka Markić called on citizens to join the new party and help “bring about a real change in the parliament”. For this, she said, they will use informal networks of citizens. “We do not have all the logistics and money, but we have plenty of people who want change in Croatia, and we will try to enable them to get involved”, she added.
“In Croatia, together with the diaspora, we have 11 electoral constituencies, and the average number of votes needed to cross the threshold is about 12,000 to 15,000. We think this is something that is realistically achievable”, concluded Markić.
