In Croatia Is Blowing a Wind of Change

The presidential elections in Croatia in the end of 2014 have offered several surprises and lots of food for analyses and thought. The biggest surprise is that, in fact, the big winner in the first round, that took place on 28 December, is the youngest candidate in the country’s history the 25-year old Ivan Vilibor Sincic. He succeeded to refute all the predictions by receiving the confidence of 16.42% of the votes and that he did with a very humble amount of money. In his own words, he spent for the campaign some 25 000 kunas (circa 4 000 euros) in cash and 80 000 kunas in the form of various services. In other words, the overall amount is 100 000 kunas (14 000 euros). Another surprise is that the candidate of the right-wing opposition Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which in the past 2 years has been slowly creeping toward the far right, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic received almost the same number of votes as the incumbent head of state Ivo Josipovic. For her voted 37.22% and for Mr Josipovic 38.46%. For the first time in Croatia’s modern history the race is so close. However, nothing behind these data is as simple as it might seem.A large part of the voters want the country to move on to the next level of democratic development. Another, as big a part, wants no change at all apart from more conservatism and has sympathies for the far right. A third group has emerged which surprised everyone in Croatia – of people who want to break up with the status quo and an entirely new path. And all this was brought together in only 47% voter turnout. Despite the appearance of new political stars, almost 53% of the voters did not find a reason in voting. Is this due to the very limited powers of the Croatian president (the head of state does not even have a veto power), the strong snow storms or simply the lack of a sufficiently attractive political option is not quite clear at this stage but it confirms the trend from the European elections in 2013 and 2014 when low turnout records were set.

Croatia is ripe for a change but what change?

2014 was a landmark year for Croatia. It broke the illusions that the economic crisis in the country is something temporary that will pass on once the economic situation in the euro area improves a bit but is a systemic problem. That is why the economic issues were central in the election campaign. 2014 has also revealed the growing need of direct democracy and that is thanks to … the EU. This is the reason why three out of the four presidential candidates campaigned for a second Croatian republic. The candidates can be described in the simplest way as two firm right-wingers, one liberal and one anti-systemist.

The Croatian Beppe Grillo or Alexis Tsipras?

Ivan Vilibor Sincic’s appearance on the political stage and the huge support for him is the result of the prolonged recession of the Croatian economy. Last year, the sixth in a row, the IMF said about Croatia that it is in an “unusually long recession”. The perspectives for 2015 are not quite encouraging, although the European Commission expects in its autumn forecast an exit although the projected growth is pretty symbolic. An exit was projected for last year too and for the year before last. In Italy, Beppe Grillo has emerged thanks to the persistent inability of the political status quo to produce the needed change as in the status quo is included the EU and the euro area in particular. Grillo’s Five Star Movement is undoubtedly a eurosceptic one. In this sense, Sincic is different to Grillo, but only at first sight because Croatia is eurosceptic by nature.

The support for the EU was, to put it mildly, unconvincing at the referendum on the country’s EU accession. The attitudes have remained almost the same since then. For now, the accusations to the EU as such that it is the main reason for the Croatian economic woes are just a few unlike Italy or Greece, but the love for the Union is not as big as it used to be in Italy, Greece or in Bulgaria for that matter. Ivan Vilibor Sincic is an anti-system player. He fights against everything and everyone, but most of all he stands for a monetary sovereignty. This is the axis which his platform [in Croatian] circled around but not at all in the past tense. He was determined after election day to use the confidence he received for the parliamentary elections later this year because the parliament is the place where he can realise his ideas. He refused to support the candidates who remained for the second round on 11 January – Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic and Ivo Josipovic.

And although he did not completely rule out the possibility of a future coalition with any of the existing parties for or after the Sabor elections in the end of the year, he clearly stated that he would not work with anyone who does not support his demand for monetary sovereignty. In his programme, Mr Sincic says that in 1994 Croatia lost its “most important sovereignty” which is the control over money. This happened with the Maastricht treaty which deprived Croatia of its most important monetary instrument – the primary issue of money. Since the introduction of the Croatian national currency (kuna), money has been created only in private banks, the so called secondary issue, through credit. This, he says, “is nothing but a hostile occupation”. “What has not been done with weapons will be done with another thing – the corporations and banks will take over our  territory, our resources and goods and will deprive our people of rights and private property”, the platform says. That is why he campaigns for “deprivatisation” of money which means to use the mechanisms of the state and the Croatian People’s Bank (HNB) to create money.

The link Sincic makes with the Maastricht treaty is odd as the treaty is adopted in 1992 and with it are established the fiscal rules that lay the foundations of the common currency. The treaty is valid for EU member states only. At the time, Croatia was not a member of the EU nor was it negotiating for accession.

Another important aspect in Sincic’s programme is the creation of a second republic because, in his words, Croatia has not become what “we wanted”. Apart from the monetary sovereignty, a lustration should also be conducted so that those who worked for the previous two-party regime and the communist regime are removed from important positions. “We must stop giving power to the criminals and the people without vision”, he says. The biggest opposition party in Croatia, HDZ, also demands lustration, but that party is rather a part of the problem because it led Croatia through its independence from former Yugoslavia and is responsible for the laying of the foundations of the young democracy.

Ivan Sincic’s desire for monetary sovereignty is easy to explain given his short career. He is an activist from the movement Live Wall that fights against foreclosures. He has the ambition to make a revision of all the privatisation contracts from the early days of the independence because, according to him, the privatisation was a national robbery.

Similar to other populist and anti-systemic parties in the EU, Ivan Vilibor Sincic seems a probable ally to Vladimir Putin because he has clear anti-US views. From his election platform it is clear that USA is the biggest “war industry” and it dominates in NATO which Croatia is a member of. The investments of the American state in the military-industrial complex are growing every year as the trend started in the beginning of World War II. The process culminated in the end of the Cold War, the platform says. “If USA is not at war it cannot survive economically and will drag the entire world down with itself. US demands everyone to follow its investments and development model. From the above said it is completely clear that USA, with its economy and foreign policy, is a permanent generator of war, instability and people’s miseries in the world”. And as NATO is just an extension of “the hand of the American imperialism”, Croatia should give up its membership in the organisation, Vilibor Sincic believes.

According to the Croatian legislation, each candidate gets a subsidy depending on the received number of votes. Because of his good performance Vilibor Sincic, too, received public money. He said he will use it to prepare for the parliamentary elections. Currently, the big dilemma is whether he will succeed to repeat or even multiply his success from the presidential elections or will sink in oblivion. This will depend very much on the reaction of the mainstream parties and some brand new political forces. After the end of the elections day the two strongest candidates – Grabar-Kitarovic and Josipovic – said they got the message. Ms Grabar-Kitarovic congratulated Vilibor Sincic in her speech and said that his victory clearly showed the need of a change. Ivo Josipovic was more contained, saying that Sincic’s result is a clear signal to the political status quo.

2014 marked the stable upsurge of a new political party in Croatia – ORaH (Sustainable Development of Croatia) of Mirela Holy, the former minister of environment. Although her party has a clear green profile, the strong support for her can be explained precisely with the Croats’ desire for something new they can trust. At the elections for the European Parliament she managed to send one MEP to Strasbourg. The opinion polls ranked Mirela Holy second after the current president Ivo Josipovic and her party was ranked second, too, ahead of Zoran Milanovic’s Social Democrats. However, she decided to stay out of the presidential elections and supported Mr Josipovic instead. According to some analysts, this could prove a big mistake after Sincic’s rise as he is firmly against everyone.

If Sincic succeeds to repeat his success in the end of the year, this will be a very bad news for the Croatian economy because it will mean that the country will enter a period of political instability. This, however, could be a good news for Putin who might get influence in another Balkan state (after Serbia). The big difference is that Croatia is a producer of oil and natural gas and is desperately trying to avoid Gazprom’s appetites to put a hand over the searches for gas and oil in the Adriatic sea….”