Boško Picula 1. Introduction

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1 Presidential elections in Croatia and (in)equality of opportunity: from the semipresidential system and the father of the nation to the parliamentary system and the first female president Boško Picula 1 Croatia is the first and the only country among the countries that succeeded Yugoslavia to have elected a woman as a president. It occurred in the direct presidential election in Apart from that, Croatia, along with Macedonia and Albania, is the only former socialist country in Europe where the two major political parties in the last parliamentary elections are the same ones as at the beginning of the democratic transition in Besides, in the course of Croatia s twenty-five years of the democratic multiparty system the party which was in power the longest is a conservative-oriented party It was out of this party s members that the first woman president was elected. Having meanwhile changed the state and legal status, the semipresidential system into the parliamentary system and with completely different political figures occupying the office of the head of state, Croatia s politics has remained, in ideological and party terms, more or less unchanged, being divided into two distinctive blocs. Amid this dichotomy the question arises as to whether it is the candidate s ideological and party profile or his/her personality to be crucial for success in Croatian presidential elections. Why is there the same ideological and partisan division today as at the beginning of the democratic transition in the case of presidential elections too? And how come it occurred in the Croatian conservative socio-political milieu characterized by questionable equality of opportunity that a woman was elected head of state? The article gives answers to these questions by employing the case study method as well as the hypotheses on how the underlying social rift affects voting behaviour. Keywords: Croatia, semi-presidential system, parliamentary system, head of state, presidential elections, parliamentary elections, political parties, women in politics, democratic transition. Introduction To what extent can one society and one state change in twenty-five years? The answer to this question depends on the internal and external determinants of dynamics within the society and the state in question. Compared to 1991, the European continent of today results markedly different due to the changes individual states and their respective societies have undergone 1 PhD, senior lecturer at the Dag Hammarskjöld University College of International Relations and Diplomacy in Zagreb, Croatia; as a consultant, he collaborates with Croatian non-governmental organizations and international organizations in Croatia and Europe. boskopicula@yahoo.com 1

2 since then. In political and economic terms, Western and Northern Europe have demonstrated continuity in development, while in the same period Eastern and South-Eastern parts of the continent have gone through a process of comprehensive transformation. In this sense, transformation refers to radical changes of political and economic systems in the central, Eastern and South-Eastern European countries in question. Moreover, some of these countries have undergone the transformation of state as well. So as to compare, while all Western European countries without exception were liberal democratic states with market economy at the beginning of the 1990s and they have preserved these characteristics to date, in Eastern European countries a very complex process of transformation of their autocratic communist systems and command economy started in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s. Moreover, one part of former communist states, which were federations at the beginning of the transformation, fell apart, which led to the outbreak of war in some of them. In these processes of transition from autocracy to democracy, from command economy to market economy and from one system of government to another, the successor states to the former Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) experienced the most complex and most dramatic transformation. In their case, apart from the abovementioned segments of transformation, there was also a transition from piece circumstances into war as well as the subsequent process of establishing peace. Apart from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia was the only state of central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe to undergo such a complex process of changes in its political, economic and constitutional status. Notably, both these countries used to be components of the former Yugoslav federation. The changes Croatia has undergone in the last twenty-five years appear to be even more evident from the perspective of Why? Because of the fact that the country, that was facing an extremely uncertain outcome of transformation in each and every of these aspects in the 1990s, nowadays is part of highstability Euro-Atlantic integration (the European Union, NATO). It took Croatia fourteen years to turn its 1995 war-zone status into a status of NATO membership (2013), while it took eighteen years to reach the status of membership of the European Union (2013). Therefore, the Croatian case of transformation of the political system and state is the one that sticks out among transformational processes in other former communist regimes and states of central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, all of them being unique in terms of history. Following the years of war, of the aftermath of war and of joining Euro-Atlantic integration, the country which used to be part of the Yugoslav socialist federation in the 1990s, is now an independent state which bases its constitutional and legal order, inter alia, on peacemaking, on 2

3 inviolability of ownership, on the rule of law and on the democratic multiparty system. In this connection, some of the highest values of the Croatian constitutional order are ethnic and gender equality. More than a quarter-century after the beginning of the transformation of political system in Croatia, which was considerably more complex compared to other Eastern and South-Eastern European countries, Croatia turns out to be a case sui generis. Politically speaking, this country demonstrates an atypical stability of its party system on the one hand and a leader character in terms of gender equality when it comes to holding highest offices on the other, particularly in comparison with the other successor states to the former Yugoslavia. Firstly, Croatia, along with Albania and Macedonia, is the only former communist country in Europe where two strongest political parties in the first democratic multiparty election were the strongest ones in the last parliamentary election as well. The parties in question are the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDP). Secondly, Croatia is one of very few European transition countries and so far the only one among the former Yugoslav countries, where both presidential and primeminister offices have been held or are still held by a woman. Interestingly, women from the conservative part of the spectrum of the Croatian political party system came to both of these positions, one of them becoming even the president of the most influential Croatian political party since the 1990 introduction of the democratic multiparty system. Jadranka Kosor, who had been serving as the vice-president of the Government of Croatia, was appointed Prime Minister in 2009 following the resignation of the then Prime Minister Ivo Sanader who was also the president of the HDZ. She was the first woman prime minister of Croatia after the beginning of the 1990 democratic transition. On that occasion Jadranka Kosor took over the duty of president of the HDZ, but in the following parliamentary election she and her party suffered a defeat. On the other hand, Kolinda Grabar Kitarović became the first President of the Republic of Croatia by having defeated the incumbent head of state Ivo Josipović in the 2015 direct presidential election. Ivo Josipović had held the President s office since 2010, the year when he won the election as the SDP s candidate, while Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović would be the HDZ s candidate in In this way, both the first Croatian female prime minister and the first female president of the state came from the ranks of the conservative HDZ. Furthermore, even Katica Ivanišević, who was the first woman to be appointed Speaker of the Croatian Chamber of Counties, which used to be the upper house of the Croatian Parliament until the constitutional changes in 2001, was a member of the HDZ. So far two women have held the office of mayor of Croatia s capital city 3

4 of Zagreb: Marina Matulović-Dropulić from the HDZ ( ) and Vlasta Pavić from the SDP ( ). Finally, it is worth noting that Croatia has had a female president of the Constitutional Court: it was Jasna Omejec who served as the President of the Constitutional Court since 2008 to So it happened that in 2015 the first Croatian president took her presidential oath in front of the members of the Constitutional Court whose president was Jasna Omejec. A situation of this kind is a rarity even in the countries of consolidated liberal democracy and there are few transition countries in Europe where women were appointed to highest political and judicial offices. However, this does not mean that women are equal in terms of numbers when it comes to holding a political office. After the last parliamentary election held on 8 November 2015, out of 151 seats, only 23 were assigned to women from electoral lists, which amounted to a little more than 15% of all seats, i.e. the lowest percentage since Furthermore, in the government there were only three female ministers or 13% (the portfolios of social policy and youth; of labour and pension system and of public administration), which is also the lowest percentage since Although Croatia is the first among the successor states to the former Yugoslavia to have had a female prime minister and to have a female president, the issue of equality of women in Croatian politics still boils down to situations in which individual women succeed in being appointed to political positions that previously used to be reserved only for men. Out of the total of 11 Croatian prime ministers since 1990, so far only one woman has been at the head of the Government, while the incumbent Croatian President is the only woman among the four presidents of Croatia to date. There have not been women at the head of the Croatian Parliament, nor at the head of the Supreme Court yet. Nevertheless, the Croatian example has to be observed and analysed in the context of a specific development of political, electoral and party system. While the political system of Croatia has undergone significant changes in the last twenty-five years, just as electoral models for parliamentary elections, the party system has been one of the most stable ones in Europe, not only in comparison with the former communist countries from the Baltic to the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea, but also when confronted with wellestablished democracies in the West and in the North of the continent. Moreover, the only electoral model which has not changed during this period is the model for presidential elections due to the fact it is a constitutional category. In this context, two key questions arise. The first question is about what caused the fact that, in terms of the strongest parties and ideological blocs around them, the Croatian party system, thereby the whole of Croatian 4

5 politics, has remained virtually unchanged since 1990, the year when the transformation of the political system began. The second one is about what made it possible for Croatia to find itself among few transition countries with women at the head of the Government and at the head of the State. If we add to the foregoing the fact that in twenty-six years of democratic multiparty system in Croatia, the ruling parliamentary majority was formed by a conservative party (HDZ), i.e. the coalitions headed by this party, for well eighteen years, another question arises. The question is: was it unavoidable for the Croatian conservative party-political system (from 1990 up to now) and prevailing conservatism (in terms of voters electoral decisions), to lead eventually to opening up the highest political positions to women in politics. In the end, was the incumbent Croatian President s success in the election determined by her personal political profile or the crucial factor was a specific political situation generated by the basic social rift in Croatian politics? An analysis of the process of transformation of the Croatian political system from the beginning of 1990 to this day and of the stability of dominant political ideas and their exponents opens up the possibility for finding answers to these questions, but also gives room for more discussion. Croatia from 1990 to 2000: From collective leadership to a charismatic leader Although Croatia as a component of the former Yugoslav federation was not a member of the Soviet military-political bloc, the process of democratisation of the former communist states from Poland to Bulgaria in the second half of 1989 progressed simultaneously with the democratisation of the Yugoslav regime. In that process within Yugoslavia, the federation s two westernmost republics, i.e. Slovenia and Croatia had primacy. The crucial moment for the democratisation of the Croatian political system within the Yugoslav Socialist Federation occurred at the XI. Congress of the League of Communists of Croatia (SKH) (a branch of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ)) in December 1998, namely one month after the actual and metaphorical fall of the Berlin Wall. At this Congress, Croatian communists, who had a guaranteed monopoly of power the same as their party colleagues throughout Yugoslavia, decided to organise the first democratic multiparty elections in Croatia. It was with this aim that the Croatian Parliament adopted a package of constitutional amendments in February 1990, whereby the political monopoly of communists ended and holding free elections for the representative bodies of power both at the Republic and at the local level was made possible. The same as in neighbouring Slovenia, which was ahead in terms of 5

6 liberalisation of society and democratisation of the political system when compared to the rest of late-1980s Yugoslavia, the first democratic elections in Croatia after the Second World War were held in April Back then, the same as the political systems in other Yugoslav republics, the Croatian political system was defined by 1974 constitutional provisions. Federal and republic constitutions, which were adopted that year, turned the former Yugoslavia from a moderately centralised federation into a de facto confederation in which six republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia with two autonomous provinces: Vojvodina and Kosovo) possessed all elements of statehood, including the right to self-determination, virtually independence. However, the constitutional position of the Yugoslav republics, so defined, was only formal as any autonomous conduct of politics would render impossible the one-party system, i.e. the political monopoly of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. In that sense, the former Yugoslavia had two power verticals, actually the same as other communist states in Europe and in the world. The first power vertical was made of state institutions, from city and municipal level all the way to the republic and federal levels, in which representatives were elected in a quasidemocratic manner, i.e. in a non-competitive elections where there was no freedom of choice, nor possibility of selection as all candidates had to be verified by the ruling party. Citizens exercised their limited electoral right exclusively in a delegate way as they could vote only for candidates proposed at the lowest administrative level (local community). So elected delegates decided on the next, higher level of authority (municipalities, regional associations of municipalities, republics, federation). Another party power vertical was represented by the particracy authority of the League of Communists which participated in the creation of institutions of state power. For example, before the 1988 constitutional changes, one place in the Presidency of Yugoslavia and in presidencies of Croatia and other republics was reserved for the President of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, or of individual republics, respectively. Therefore, Croatia faced the 1990 democratic changes with the institutions of the communist regime, thereby deprived of the communist attribute and the party monopoly. From 1974 Yugoslavia had, hence all individual former Yugoslav republics too, an assembly political system in which the representative body was markedly dominant, while the government and the collective head of state acted merely as its executive bodies. From 1980, when Josip Broz Tito, the country s president for life passed away, such a system was dependent on Tito s role in Yugoslavia s political life. 6

7 In the decade that preceded the 1991 collapse of the former Yugoslavia, neither the country s assembly system nor the respective decision making model within Yugoslavia s extremely heterogeneous community, could withstand the crisis test. In the first power vertical, the quasi-democratic one, a specific quality of the Yugoslav political system was reflected in the collective leadership at the level of the heads of the republics and of the federation itself. Namely, the 1974 constitutional provisions specified that Yugoslavia (after the death of Josip Broz Tito) and all republics and autonomous provinces were to be headed by a presidency made up of several members. That is how national equality, as well as the equality of the republics and autonomous provinces at the federal level were supposed to be ensured, based on the idea that, after a charismatic leader, representing of the State should be entrusted to a collective leadership. So it happened that between 1980 and the beginnings of democratisation at the end of the 1980s the former Yugoslavia found itself amid general collectivisation of political leaderships. On the one hand, it did provisionally amortise the monopolisation of political power in the hands of individuals, but on the other, it led to depersonalisation of political leadership and its ineffectiveness. After several years of anonymous political leaderships in the whole of the former Yugoslavia, in the second half of the 1980s, together with strengthening of nationalist movements, primarily in Serbia, a strong personalisation of politics occurred. The first identifiable post-tito leader in this sense was the President of the League of Communists of Serbia, later President of the Republic of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević, who would subsequently be labelled by the international community as the main culprit for the outbreak of war in the former Yugoslavia and would eventually be indicted for war crimes. Milošević s rise and the strengthening of the nationalist movement in Serbia in 1988 and in 1989 occurred in the period when Croatia did not have real political leaders as the country still felt the consequences of Tito s confrontation with the leaders of the 1971 Croatian national movement, called the Croatian Spring, that sought greater rights for the republics as members of the federation. Paradoxically, Tito removed the leaders of this movement from office and applied measures against thousands of their supporters, but the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution actually stipulated most of the requests voiced by the Croatian Spring. Notably, at the helm of the movement was a woman. It was Savka Dabčević-Kučar, the first woman at the head of the Croatian Republic Government ( ) and the first woman at the head of the League of Communists of Croatia ( ). Due to her political activity and her reformist programme, Savka Dabčević-Kučar became a symbol of the Croatian National Movement of 7

8 the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Her leading political role in the Croatian Spring definitely contributed to the affirmation of the perception of women in Croatian politics, even in the years after her ouster in During the following two decades political life in Croatia was called Croatian silence because of the repression against the supporters of the Croatian Spring and the passivity of Croatian communists who succeeded to their nationally oriented predecessors. It should be noted that subsequently in Croatian and Yugoslav political life other two women as first female holders of their respective offices appeared. These were: Milka Planinc who was the first president of the Yugoslav government (in office from 1982 to 1986) and Ema Derossi- Bjelajac as the first woman at the head of the Croatian Republic Presidency ( ). Although Savka Dabčević-Kučar returned to Croatia s political life in 1990 as the head of the Coalition of People s Accord, the third most important actor (besides the HDZ and the SKH, i.e. League of Communists of Croatia), she did not manage to capitalise on her previous leading position within the Croatian Spring. In this period when Yugoslavia s political, economic and government organisation was nearing collapse and Croatian citizens perceived the greatest threat in the growing nationalist movement in Serbia, another participant of the Croatian Spring performed by far more successfully, both politically and as a leader. It was Franjo Tuđman, a former general of the Yugoslav army and one of the imprisoned persons for his involvement in the Croatian national movement in the early 1970s. In spite of the fact that he was by far less popular and recognised as a champion of the ideas of the Croatian Spring than Savka Dabčević-Kučar, he was the first among the Croatian dissidents who decided to found a political party with a Croatian independence programme. His party the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) was among the first to appear under the circumstances of gradual breaking up of the party monopoly of the League of Communists of Croatia, and was thus recognised as the strongest advocate of Croatian self-determination, either through a loose Yugoslav confederation or through an independent state. Due to the fact that it was perceived as such in the minds of Croatian voters, the HDZ achieved a sweeping victory in the 1990 elections and secured an absolute majority in the Croatian Parliament. The reformed League of Communists of Croatia, which would soon be renamed into Croatian Social Democratic Party, won half as many parliamentary seats. Although anti-regime itself, the Coalition of National Accord suffered an electoral defeat, which was a consequence of the fact that in the circumstances of the climax of the Yugoslav political crisis its approach to redefining the Yugoslav State was not sufficiently articulated, and was therefore viewed by a 8

9 large majority of voters as softer. Apart from that, unlike Franjo Tuđman, Savka Dabčević- Kučar did not participate personally in the election, relying on the prospect of being appointed head of the Republic presidency by the Parliament, after an eventual victory of her political option. This was in reality achieved by Franjo Tuđman, who thus became the first noncommunist President of the Presidency in After the HDZ s victory in the election, it was clear that the new ruling party in Croatia would soon address the issue of changing the Republic Constitution by adapting it to its political programme which entailed a completely new role of the political leadership. In July 1990, the new Parliament assembly adopted the constitutional amendments, whereby, among other things, the socialist identity of Croatia, which was still a Yugoslav republic, was changed and the institution of the President of the Republic was introduced for the first time. The seven-member presidency, i.e. the collective leadership of Croatia, was replaced by the President of the Republic, the office that was assumed by Franjo Tuđman, and six vicepresidents. In the course of year 1990, the 1974 Constitution underwent thus two sets of amendments, but very shortly framing a new constitution of the Republic of Croatia was undertaken and the multiparty Parliament assembly adopted the new Constitution in December Although Croatia was still a member of the Yugoslav federation, the constitution framers wrote the text of the fundamental law as if it was already an independent state. It radically altered the previous parliamentary political system and stipulated a semipresidential system modelled upon the political system of the French Fifth Republic, with a President as the central political figure. There were two reasons for such stipulation. The first one was Croatia s necessity of becoming a well-defined political community with stable authority and a clear centre of decision making in an increasingly conflicting context. Having dispensed with the heritage of collective leadership and the dominant role of the assembly as a representative body, the Constitution framers opted for the semi-presidential system in which the government is equally responsible to the head of the state and to the parliament. The second reason was certainly the institutional design adapted to the political personality of Franjo Tuđman who was perceived by a great deal of the general public as a contemporary father of the nation whose mission was to ensure Croatia s state independence as soon as possible. After the negotiations among the six Yugoslav republics about a new form of the new state failed in early 1991, Croatia followed Slovenia s example and held the independence referendum that year in May. In that referendum more than 93% of voters voted in favour of the sovereignty of the Republic of Croatia. While Slovenia, Croatia, 9

10 Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina opted for their own states independence in the respective referenda, the remaining two republics, i.e. Serbia and Montenegro formed a new Yugoslav federation. However, parts of the Serbian population in Croatia and in Bosnia- Herzegovina did not agree with the independence of these two republics and therefore they staged a rebellion, assisted by Serbia s leadership and by the remainders of the Yugoslav People s Army. The ensuing war lasted until 1995 when it ended with the help of the international community headed by NATO. In this war, Croatia confirmed its state independence and territorial integrity, which strengthened the political position and charisma of President Tuđman. His legitimacy was thereby set up on the role of the wartime leader and he had vast entitlements, out of which the most important ones were the power to appoint and remove the President of the Government and ministers, as well as to issue legally effective decrees in extraordinary circumstances. However, his autocratic style of conducting politics and the fact his party had a parliamentary majority for ten years, enabled Franjo Tuđman not only to use extensively his constitutional powers, but also to concentrate power in the institution of the Office of the President of the Republic and in special presidential and coordination bodies which actually acted as political government, while the real Government dealt with economic and other operative issues.. From 1990 to 1999, when Franjo Tuđman died, Croatia had a kind of superpresidential system tailored to suit a concrete person and strengthened in war and post-war circumstances. Constitutional and political changes in 2000: A ceremonial president and the first woman in a runoff of the presidential election Originally appointed to the helm of the Croatian collective head of state in May 1990, while Croatia was still part of Yugoslavia, Franjo Tuđman very quickly accumulated political power on the basis of his role in the country s gaining independence and in leading it during the four-year war against the rebels in the parts of Croatia occupied by Serbian forces ( ). Although the 1990 Constitution stipulated that the new parliamentary and presidential elections should be called under the electoral legislation which would be enacted no later than one year from the date of the promulgation of the Constitution, the process of achieving independence and the beginning of war in the former Yugoslavia postponed the new presidential and parliamentary elections. These elections were held simultaneously in August 1992 and the presidential election was the first of that kind in the history of Croatia (in 10

11 conformity with the 1974 Constitution, members of the Croatian Presidency used to be elected by the Parliament, not in a direct election). In a functional sense, these were intraconflict elections as they were held within the manifest armed conflict in which Croatia was involved from the summer of 1991 and which would end, as far as direct armed operations are concerned, only in the summer of 1995, together with the war in neighbouring Bosnia- Herzegovina. Defined like this according to its empirical content and political-historical significance, intra-conflict elections would later be held also in Afghanistan (presidential and parliamentary) and in Iraq (parliamentary), so Croatia was the first state after the Cold War where democratic elections for national political institutions were organised during war. The electoral campaign and the election outcome were largely determined by the war circumstances and therefore Franjo Tuđman triumphed already in the first round of the election. Eight candidates participated in the election and Franjo Tuđman won 56,73% of the vote. The runner-up was Dražen Budiša, president of the centrist Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS) and one of the student leaders during the Croatian Spring, who won 21,87% of the vote, and Savka Dabčević-Kučar (the only female candidate), who had founded her own party after the first democratic multiparty election, also centrist: Croatian People s Party (HNS), was only third (6,02%). As for the electoral model, the presidential elections in Croatia are defined in all their elements by the Constitution and have not changed to this day. The President of the Republic, according to the Constitution, is elected by universal and equal suffrage, in direct elections by secret ballot for a term of five years. Notably, nobody can be elected more than two times. The President of the Republic is elected by a majority of all voters who went to the polls. If none of the candidates wins such majority in the first round, the election is repeated 14 days later in a runoff. The Constitution stipulates that only the two candidates who won the greatest number of votes in the first round are entitled to run in the second round. At that point the candidate who wins the majority of votes becomes President. In the 1992 parliamentary election, namely in the election for the lower house called Chamber of Deputies, Tuđman s HDZ won by gaining an absolute majority of seats (the same result would be repeated half a year later in the election for the upper house of the new bicameral parliament called the Chamber of Counties). Franjo Tuđman, who was the first directly elected President of the Republic, additionally strengthened his political position and therefore he would use his newly acquired legitimacy both within the country when confronting his intra-party rivals and the opposition parties, and in the international community which was trying to end the armed conflicts and the ensuing 11

12 humanitarian crisis in Croatia, more or less with little success. As soon as these armed conflicts ended in the autumn of 1995 with the assistance of the United States of America and NATO forces, which was preceded by Croatian military operations for liberating parts of the country occupied by the rebels, Franjo Tuđman called a new parliamentary election in October 1995 in which the HDZ once again won an absolute majority of seats. Tuđman himself, started his second presidential term after a new election victory in June 1997, when out of the three candidates, he won the most, i.e. 61,41%. In this election the runner-up was Zdravko Tomac with 21,03% of the vote, while the third place was taken by Vlado Gotovac, the HSLS s candidate, with 17,56% of the vote. This was the last election at a national level before 2000 in which the HDZ won. For the record, according to the constitutional provisions back then, the Croatian president could not assume any other public or professional duty apart from the one in the party, so Franjo Tuđman was also the president of his party HDZ throughout his presidential term. After years of disease Franjo Tuđman died exactly in the middle of his second presidential term, namely in December At that moment the lower house parliamentary representatives four-year term had just expired and therefore both parliamentary and presidential elections were called. After ten years of absolute majority in all the Croatian Parliament s chambers (until 1992 Croatia had three parliamentary chambers as a remnant of Yugoslavia s constitutional provisions, and after that two of them), in January 2000 the HDZ suffered a defeat in the elections and the new government, after a convincing victory, was formed by an ideologically diverse coalition made up of six previously opposition parties headed by the social democrats (SDP) and the liberals (HSLS). Three weeks after the parliamentary election, the presidential election was held and it was won in the second round by Stipe Mesić, once Tuđman s associate, and after 1994 his fierce critic. After the first free elections of 1990, Mesić became the first President of the Croatian Government, and subsequently the Croatian representative to the Yugoslav Presidency and in the last months of the federation s existence he became the last president of that Presidency. After the 1992 election Stjepan Mesić assumes the duty of Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies in the Croatian Parliament and in 1994 a serious rift with Franjo Tuđman occurred because of the relations with neighbouring Bosnia-Herzegovina and the internal situation. In spite of the fact that Mesić, the HNS s candidate entered the 2000 election race as an outsider, he won a clear victory in the first round by gaining 41,11% of the vote and in the second round he triumphed over Dražen Budiša, a joint candidate of the HSLS and the SDP. 12

13 In this election, as it had happened in 1997, there were no female candidates and until 2005 the only woman who ran for President was Savka Dabčević-Kučar. In 2000 the Croatian Government was changed and thus the conditions for changing the political system were obtained. This transformation had been requested for years by opposition parties which had been criticising the negative experience of the semi-presidential model. Therefore the semipresidential system in Croatia was abolished in November 2000 by means of the constitutional provisions, and a parliamentary system was legally introduced. This parliamentary system differed from the pure parliamentary system only by direct election of the President of the Republic and the President s participation in creating foreign, defence and national security policy (together with the Government). The key novelties were abandoning President s powers to appoint and remove from office prime ministers and members of the Government and to issue legally effective decrees in extraordinary circumstances. According to the current constitutional provisions, the President of the Republic of Croatia represents and acts on behalf of the Republic of Croatia both home and abroad, takes care of regular and harmonised exercise of state power and of its stability, and is responsible for the defence of independence and territorial integrity of the country. The President of the Republic is not allowed to assume any other public or professional duty, and after the election he or she has to resign from membership of a political party and to notify the Parliament on that resignation. As for the main powers, the head of state calls elections for the Croatian Parliament and convenes its first session, calls referenda in accordance with the Constitution and gives the mandate to form the Government to the person who, based on the distribution of seats in the Croatian Parliament and the consultations held, enjoys confidence of the majority of all representatives. Therefore the President s role is of crucial importance when it comes to the formation of the Government s composition. However, this power was reduced from the power to appoint the prime minister as well as individual ministers in the previous semipresidential system to the power to give the mandate for forming the Government to the person who can guarantee to have confidence of more than one half of all members of Parliament. After 2000, the President is no longer allowed to dismiss the president of the Croatian Government as both the Prime Minister and the Government as a whole depend only on the confidence within the Parliament. Finally, the President of the Republic can propose to the Government holding of a session in order to consider specific issues and is allowed to attend the session and take part in discussion. As far as dissolution of the Parliament is concerned, the head of state, upon the proposal of the Government and with the Prime 13

14 Minister s counter-signature, and after consultations with the representatives of parliamentary groups, is allowed to dissolve the Croatian Parliament if the Croatian Government requested a vote of confidence and that motion was defeated by members voting no confidence, or if the state budget has not been approved 120 days after it was proposed. In spite of the fact that, compared to one part of parliamentary political systems in Europe, the Croatian version provides for a greater volume of powers of the head of state, the president s role, apart from foreign policy and security, has been essentially reduced to ceremonial and protocol duties. Compared with the period from 1990 to 2000, the current political system of Croatia does not have the President as practically the most powerful person in the country anymore; this role has been taken over by the head of the Government who enjoys the confidence of a more-than-half majority in the parliament. Since the constitutional provisions were enacted at the end of 2000, Stjepan Mesić, as the second President of the Republic of Croatia spent the first year of his term within the semi-presidential system without using such wide powers he had, due to his agreement with the newly elected parliamentary majority. A new change of government occurred in the following parliamentary election in 2003 when, due to the collapse of the SDP and HSLS coalition, the HDZ won again. However, Stjepan Mesić won the 2005 presidential election by defeating the HDZ s candidate Jadranka Kosor who was the government s vice-president in that period. The election was held in two rounds; in the first round there were record thirteen candidates, including three women, and it was the first time that a woman reached the second round. In the second round the incumbent president won 65,93% of the vote (in the first round 48,92%), and his contender 34,07% (in the first round 20,31%). Although Jadranka Kosor suffered defeat, her performance in the election announced the formula of a possible first victory of a woman in the presidential election. The formula was: enjoying the support of the strongest conservative party in the country and having a programme focused on social issues. Croatia on the eve and in the wake of joining the European Union: The first social democratic president and the first woman president of Croatia After Stjepan Mesić won the presidential election once again in 2005, the HDZ secured a victory in the parliamentary election two years later. Generally speaking, the first decade of the 21 st century brought about the country s political stability, with a few exceptions such as the circumstances of Croatia s cooperation with The Hague Criminal Tribunal for the former 14

15 Yugoslavia. The fundamental reason for this is the consensus of the strongest political parties and actors about the urgency of the country s accession to the European Union and to NATO. It was with this aim that an informal coalition was formed in In point of fact, it was cooperation between the ruling HDZ and the leading opposition party SDP in achieving this major foreign policy target. As for European-Atlantic integration, Croatia was left out of the 2004 great enlargement when ten new members, mostly former socialist countries, were admitted to the European Union and seven new members, also from Eastern and South- Eastern Europe, were admitted to NATO. The only former Yugoslav state that entered the European Union and NATO in 2004 was Slovenia, while the reason for Croatia s absence from the list of these countries was the fact that the formal negotiations on full membership started comparatively late due to the abovementioned problems concerning cooperation with the Hague Tribunal. The main political forces of Croatia reached an agreement on their cooperation and in the mid-2000s they accelerated the process of overcoming all hindrances to negotiations with the European Union and NATO. Consequently, the country was first admitted to NATO in April 2009 (together with Albania) and then, in July 2013 to the European Union (alone). By mid-2009 the first significant political crisis after war arose as the then Premier Ivo Sanader resigned from the duty of Prime Minister and of president of the HDZ. As it turned out subsequently, Sanader stepped down because of his involvement in a number of corruption affairs, for which he was detained and is still on trial now. At the same time, the country felt the impact of the global financial and economic crisis, which created new circumstances for the presidential election that was held in December As Stjepan Mesić was not allowed to run for the third consecutive presidential term, the country was supposed to get a new president. In the meantime, Mesić s rival from the previous election Jadranka Kosor had become the first female president of the Government and the first woman president of the HDZ and therefore she had no intention of running for President again. Under the impact of Sanader s resignation and the crisis in the country, the electorate largely turned from the HDZ and thus the HDZ s candidate Andrija Hebrang did not even reach the second round, which was the first situation of that kind since In the first round the SDP s candidate Ivo Josipović won the first place with 32,44% of the vote, while the second place was won by Milan Bandić, Mayor of the capital city of Zagreb, who had been a member of the SDP prior to his decision to run for President and was expelled from the party membership for this reason. In point of fact, Bandić did not respect the results of the party s 15

16 primaries in which Ivo Josipović won the party colleagues support for presidential candidacy. The total of twelve candidates participated in the presidential election, including two women and the voters preferred the social democratic programme of Ivo Josipović to Milan Bandić s populistic ideological mix. That is how Josipović triumphed with 60,26% of the vote in the runoff, becoming thus the first SDP member to win in a Croatian presidential election. The SDP s victory in the election for head of state opened a path to a victory in the parliamentary election to be held in December 2011 to the party. The SDP formed a broad coalition, similar to the one of 2000 for this election, and won an absolute majority of parliamentary seats. Having suffered the greatest defeat after 2000, the HDZ elected a new party president Tomislav Karamarko who replaced Jadranka Kosor at the helm of the party and abandoned her centrist policies by shifting the party closer to the right. In spite of the fact that the SDP, together with its coalition partners, enjoyed a high degree of voters support at the beginning of the term and had a safe majority in the parliament as well as President Ivo Josipović s support, due to a slow implementation of reform plans and an ineffective management of the country, the party faced electoral defeat, first in the European elections in 2013 and in 2014, than in the 2015 presidential election. Although President Ivo Josipović tried to distance himself from the SDP s unpopular Government and from Premier Zoran Milanović, he did not manage to avoid the situation in which most voters perceived him as coresponsible for the crisis. The first round of the new presidential election was held in December 2014 and four candidates participated in the race. Ivo Josipović narrowly won it with 38,46% of the vote, by far less than it had been predicted by opinion polls. In the second place there was the HDZ s candidate Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović former Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration and Croatian Ambassador to the USA, who gained 37,22% of the vote. Therefore, the outcome of the second round turned out to be extremely uncertain, which occurred for the first time since there had been direct presidential elections in Croatia. Two weeks later the second round of the election was held and for the first time a woman was elected President of Croatia. Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović won 50,74% of the vote, and Ivo Josipović 49,26%, becoming thus the only President of Croatia to have served just one term. What is the main reason for Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović s success? Apart from her effective campaign in which messages about necessary political changes and about resolving citizens economic and social problems prevailed, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović presented herself both as a fresh face in Croatian politics and as a successful minister and ambassador with important 16

17 foreign policy experience (immediately before the presidential election she was serving as NATO s Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy). Ideologically she positioned herself as an exponent of moderate national conservatism and an advocate of Franjo Tuđman s political heritage, which homogenised the centre-right and right-wing electorate. A conjunction of protest votes against the ruling coalition, which was also personified through the head of state at that moment and a profile of a female politician who appeared different and new to the Croatian political scene, made it possible for Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović to be elected female President for the first time in Croatian history. Gender equality in Croatian politics has now been even officially confirmed Instead of Conclusion: A quarter-century of the same ideas, but different exponents? In the early 1990s Croatia, along with Bosnia-Herzegovina, went through the most complex transformation of its political, economic, state and peacetime stability status among the former socialist countries in Europe. The traumatic pre-war and war circumstances of this multi-stage transformation process had a long-term impact on the political processes in Croatia, on the profile and creation of the institutions of Croatia s political system and on the party system. The surveys carried out in Croatia at the beginning of the democratic transition showed that the fundamental social rift that affected the formation of political parties was related to the attitude towards the issue of Croatian statehood. Therefore, right from the very beginning of the democratic multiparty system in Croatia, the HDZ, being the strongest rightwing party, imposed itself as a sort of anticommunist and nationalist movement whose main objective was Croatian state independence. On the left, the role of central party was preserved by the SDP which, being a successor to the former regime party from the period of Yugoslavia, survived the implosion of voters confidence during war and soon became a modern social democratic party. This party dichotomy was kept throughout most of the last quarter-century of Croatian democracy and the diversity of voters preferences is most evident from changes of political persons in the position of head of state and from the analysis of the two kinds of political systems. During the semi-presidential system in the 1990s, the President was a dominant figure in both the political system and in political life and the system itself was tailored to suit the profile of Franjo Tuđman as the most important individual political actor in the years of gaining independence, of war and in the post-war period. 17

18 Table. Presidents of the Republic of Croatia President of the Term Party Presidential election Republic of Croatia result Franjo Tuđman HDZ Number of women in relation to the total number of candidates (first ) (second ) (victory in the first round with 56,73% of the vote) (victory in the first round with 60,12% of the vote) 1/8 (12,50%) 0/3 (0%) Stjepan Mesić HNS (second ) (second ) (victory in the second round with 56,94% of the vote) (victory in the second round with 65,93% of the vote) 0/9 (0%) 3/13 (23,08/) Ivo Josipović SDP (victory in the second round with 60,26% of the vote) 2/12 (16,67%) Kolinda Grabar- Kitarović 2015 HDZ (victory in the second round with 50,74% of the vote) 1/4 (25,00%) 18

19 After the parliamentary system was introduced in 2000, the position of head of state gave way to the position of premier in terms of political power and influence, so voters in the presidential elections from 2000 to 2015 voted for persons of different profiles, thus showing more ceremonial than substantial understanding of politics. While in the 2011 parliamentary election the first female premier with her party suffered heavy defeat, in the 2015 presidential election it was exactly a woman to win for the first time. In both cases the female politicians in question came from the same HDZ party. It means that the HDZ had been in power long enough to become a sort of organic party in Croatia and could find it easier to make pioneering moves in politics. However, Croatia, as one of very few transition countries in Europe to have had a woman both at the head of the state and at the head of the Government, still lacks balance when it comes to actual gender equality in politics, especially in terms of parliamentary seats. Nevertheless, the experiences Croatia has gathered over the past halfcentury in which the country went through dramatic political changes, in which there was a woman at the forefront of the 1970 national movement and now there is another one who is Head of State, at the very least, represent a case for itself, especially in the context of transformation. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Caramani, D. (2013). Komparativna politika. Zagreb: Fakultet političkih znanosti Sveučilišta u Zagrebu Gaubatz, K. T. (1999). Elections and War. Stanford: Stanford University Press Heywood, A. (2007). Politics. Basingstoke / New York: Palgrave MacMillan Kasapović, M. (ur.) (2001). Hrvatska politika : Izbori, stranke i parlament u Hrvatskoj. Zagreb: Fakultet političkih znanosti Sveučilišta u Zagrebu Kasapović, M. (1996). Demokratska tranzicija i političke stranke. Zagreb: Fakultet političkih znanosti Sveučilišta u Zagrebu Lalić, D., Kunac, S. (2010). Izborne kampanje u Hrvatskoj. Zagreb: Fakultet političkih znanosti Sveučilišta u Zagrebu Lijphart, A. (1995). Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, Oxford: Oxford University Press Nohlen, D. (1992). Izborno pravo i stranački sustav. Zagreb: Školska knjiga Petak, Z., Kasapović, M., Lalić, D. (2004). Lokalna politika u Hrvatskoj. Zagreb: Fakultet političkih znanosti Sveučilišta u Zagrebu 19