Secular Stipe

President Stipe Mesić (Stipe Mesic) usually leads. This time he followed. He had to wait for SDP to rediscover itself as defender of secular values of Croatia before he had dared to express disagreement with Catholic Church's initiative for shops to be closed on Sunday.

In the meantime, hardly anyone was surprised with the Church initiative being the reason for just another among many rifts between main coalition partners –HSS and SDP. Rural and conservative HSS had, just as it had been widely expected, supported the initiative, while SDP had rejected it head on.