[LOCAL ELECTIONS] HDZ and SDP Finally Together

Coalition between HDZ and SDP – great unfulfilled dream of every born-again Croatian Europhile – is going to become reality, although not in Sabor or any other place where it actually matters.

Place where this historic event occurred is Plaški (Plaski), small mountain municipality in Gorski Kotar where ethnic Serbs just happen to have majority and where such majority reflected in SDSS, Serb nationalist party, having power.

Recently Croatian public was reminded of that when local administration, led by mayor Radmila Medaković (Radmila Medakovic), decided to change few street names in Plaški. 1991-95 war heroes and Croatian Army units were replaced with St. Sava, patron saint of Serbs, and Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic), 19^th Century Serb linguist whom many Croatian nationalists consider to be spiritual father of Grand Serbian nationalism.

Following the outrage in Croatian media, leaders of local organisations of HDZ, HNS, HSLS have gathered on Saturday and agreed to form joint ticket for local elections, with a specific purpose of bringing down local SDSS administration. Leaders of SDP and HSS joined the conference by phone and expressed their support. It is still unclear whether all those parties will run on a single ticket or have merely agreed to form grand coalition after the elections. Article in Večernji list (Vecernji list) says that the ticket will include “respectable ethnic Serbs” in order to prevent any thoughts of grand coalition being “anti-Serb”.

In any case, regardless of coalition being limited to small, impoverished and relatively unimportant local municipality, this represents a precedent that will nevertheless be used as an argument when the need for such coalition appears on national level. And that need might appear sooner than anyone thinks.