Croatia’s ‘Golden Opportunity’ Vote

ZAGREB, Croatia —  The election season here in Croatia has been shortened by fate and the nationalist incumbents, who halted campaigning once to mourn late President Franjo Tudjman and again for solemn celebrations of Christmas and New Year’s.

But even the streamlined stumping has persuaded Croats and foreign observers that after five successive dictatorships this century, the parliamentary balloting Monday and a presidential vote three weeks later are the last, best chance for a democratic Croatia and eventual peace in the region.

Shunned by the West for human rights abuses and impoverished by war and high-level corruption, the Croatia left behind by Tudjman is a nation hungering for change.

Despite the advantages of incumbency and Tudjman’s hallowed image as the George Washington of Croatia, the ruling Croatian Democratic Union, known as the HDZ, is trailing an unusually cohesive opposition because it stands for the one thing Croats know they don’t want: the status quo.

“This is a golden opportunity for the opposition, as it is obvious they will get a majority of seats in parliament. The only question is whether they will be able to make a difference soon enough,” said Slaven Letica, a political analyst who once served as national security advisor but left Tudjman’s regime when it became too nationalistic.

The problems besetting Croatia run the gamut from a ravaged economy to poisonous relations with its minority Serbs and its Balkan neighbors. And the new leadership, however it is arrayed among the six opposition parties likely to form a grand coalition, will have to balance placating international human rights critics and the Croatian people, who see themselves as being disproportionately punished for a regional conflict that Serbs started.

Tudjman’s death Dec. 10 stirred sentiments of gratitude among Croats for his leadership in wresting their first independent state in nearly a millennium from the collapsing Yugoslav federation.

But the late leader’s autocratic behavior and disregard for Croatia’s international standing have given voters pause to reflect on their isolation and the disastrous drop in living standards that coincided with his nearly 10 years in power.

“People vote with their stomachs,” said Ivica Racan, head of the Social Democratic Party. Polls project that the party, together with the Social Liberals, will get the largest share of votes in the parliamentary elections.

The two parties, campaigning as a team, promise a coalition government if victorious. But there is a good chance that they will not win a majority and will have to align in a larger coalition with the four other opposition parties, whose members all refuse to cooperate with the HDZ.

While the HDZ sought to benefit from public sympathy for Tudjman by setting the vote so soon after his death and at a time when many Croats are abroad for the holidays, Racan believes that the strategy will backfire. With 18% unemployment and many of those who have jobs paid below the poverty line, the Christmas break has served more to give Croats time to contemplate their sagging fortunes than to relish the HDZ’s sole accomplishment of independence.

“Although some of our voters will be out of the country and more HDZ supporters will be coming in, the citizens will revolt against this attempt to manipulate the outcome,” said Drazen Budisa, Racan’s Social Liberal partner.

On top of the bleak jobs picture, Croatia under Tudjman racked up more than $9 billion in foreign debt, or $2,000 per capita. Tudjman’s bloating of the government bureaucracy and his priority of nationalist loyalty over security and effective law enforcement have created an army and police forces in need of thorough purging.

Economist Stjepan Zdunic noted that state control of financial institutions allowed politics to distort lending policies to make cheap credit available to HDZ loyalists. That deprived genuine entrepreneurs of capital to start viable businesses and led to many privatized state companies going bankrupt after landing in incompetent hands. More than 20,000 Croatian businesses have run up such huge debts that their bank accounts are frozen by creditors’ liens.

“The main cause of the current depression is of a structural nature, although corruption also plays a part,” said Zdunic, who worries that the current leadership is selling off assets to cover its budget deficit in a preelection bid to pay overdue state wages and pensions.

Vlado Gotovac, president of the Liberal Party, said all six opposition forces are united in their commitment to change privatization policy and combat corruption, including the inflated salaries the HDZ enacted for more than 10,000 government bureaucrats.

“We have promised a 40% cut in the salaries of officials and members of parliament,” said the poet and communist-era dissident. “By doing so, we would show we are more in touch with the people who are suffering through these hard times.”

Most damaging in the development of parliamentary democracy was the omnipotent role accorded the president in the constitution written by Tudjman, said Racan, calling on the next leadership to perform “political euthanasia” by reducing the head of state’s powers.

Even the HDZ’s candidate for the presidency on the Jan. 24 ballot is one of the party’s most liberal and democratic figures, Foreign Minister Mate Granic. A week after Tudjman’s death, Granic told European Union leaders in Berlin that Croatia wants a postelection dialogue with the alliance that has already invited neighboring Slovenia to negotiate membership.

“I think this country can now turn a corner. It has a lot of lost time to make up for, but I think it can do that,” said Peter W. Galbraith, who served until 1998 as the first U.S. ambassador to independent Croatia.

“The impending change of leadership makes a huge difference for the whole region, especially for Bosnia, as the biggest threat to its survival has been the aspirations of its neighbors for a greater Serbia and a greater Croatia,” Galbraith said. “Most Croats never bought into the greater Croatia idea, and every one of Tudjman’s likely successors is against it and has no intention of pursuing that.”

Galbraith disputes the international community’s judgment of Croatian cooperation with the international war crimes tribunal, which accuses Zagreb of thwarting its work. Croatia has turned over most indicted suspects and officials probably don’t know where the rest are hiding, said the erstwhile envoy who now teaches at the National War College in Washington.

Bosnian leaders and opposition figures in the rump Yugoslavia agree that the impending change in Croatia offers a chance not just for a more democratic voice in Zagreb, but also for easing relations in the region. The political and ethnic conflicts that led to wars during the last decade in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo province in Serbia, the main republic in Yugoslavia, were fueled by Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic, now the Yugoslav president.

“We’ve had many problems in our relations with Croatia, but maybe now we can emphasize what is good in those relations and work toward resolving the rest,” said Ejup Ganic, a vice president of Bosnia.

Some Croatian observers such as Letica, the analyst, worry that apathy among opposition voters and the influx of holiday visitors from the Croatian diaspora could give the HDZ more support than polls are forecasting. A constitutional loophole allows any Croat living abroad to obtain a passport and voting rights, while the lack of an absentee voting option prevents full-time citizens of Croatia from exercising their franchise if they are away on voting day. Those among the diaspora tend to be staunch HDZ supporters, unlike the Croatian mainstream.

But some Western diplomats believe that the public outpouring of sympathy at Tudjman’s funeral Dec. 13 was an untrustworthy barometer of electoral leanings.

“All polls show two important things: that the opposition has a 2-to-1 lead, and that the only issue people care about is the economy--unemployment, pensions, a better life for their kids,” U.S. Ambassador William Dale Montgomery said.

He expects immediate improvements in Croatia’s human rights record in the event of the forecast opposition victory, including an end to state control of television and other media. But he noted that sensitivity concerning such issues as cooperating with the war crimes tribunal, reducing Zagreb’s influence over Bosnian Croats and allowing the return of Serb refugees to Croatia is likely to encourage even democratic forces to move ahead slowly.

The likelihood of an opposition victory has foreign observers of the Balkan conflicts hopeful for the region for the first time in ages.

“If Croatia really starts to get accepted on an international basis, this will show Serbia that there is a standard that applies to everybody,” said John Fox, director of the Washington office of the Open Society Institute, the support-for-democracy programs financed by philanthropist George Soros. “If the change in leadership does go moderately well, it could be the first step toward normalization for the whole region.”

And normalization is what Croats say they want and opposition leaders say they can deliver.

“My wish is for Croatia to be normal, with normal political life and normal international relations and normal tolerance for people who don’t think the same way we do,” Racan said. “And I sincerely believe we can become such a country, or I wouldn’t be seeking this job.”