Croatians May Oust Conservative President in Tight Election

(Bloomberg) -- Croatians are voting in an election that may oust the president as frustration over corruption and ambitions for deeper integration in the European Union may rebalance politics in the bloc’s newest member.

Incumbent Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, a former NATO executive running on the carefully crafted image of a globe-trotting diplomat, must overcome a second-place finish in the first round and links to the scandal-plagued mayor of Zagreb to win. If she fails, the result could spell trouble for her ally Andrej Plenkovic, the prime minister, before general elections in the fall.

Polling stations close at 7 p.m., when an exit poll will be released that may give an indication of the outcome.

Kitarovic has reached out to voters who want Plenkovic to steer his ruling party toward the nationalism that has taken root in eastern EU states like Poland and Hungary.

Her challenger, former Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic, is betting that a center-left platform that rejects extremism in favor of inclusiveness will give him the edge in the vote. He has also pledged to staunch hemorrhaging in the population, which has shrunk by almost a fifth since the 1990s as young Croats leave in search of better-paid jobs abroad.

“I will fight against the plague that’s consuming Croatia, and that’s corruption and conflicts of interest,” Milanovic said in a televised debate with Kitarovic before the vote. “We can overturn demographic trends and keep our young people here only with a decent, honest government.”

While the president’s role is largely ceremonial, the office commands the armed forces and decides over foreign-policy appointments with the premier. A new term for Kitarovic would strengthen Plenkovic’s position as he tries to stoke an economy that’s trailing other eastern European peers after years of stagnation.

Graft Questions

But Milanovic, prime minister during Croatia’s double-dip recession from 2011 until 2015, bested the incumbent in a first round of voting on Dec. 22. He has a seven-point lead with 48%, according to a poll published Dec. 23 by Ipsos.

The president’s backing among conservatives soared in 2018, when she won international renown for images of her kissing Croatian soccer players during the country’s run to the World Cup final. The 51-year-old is now counting on backers of the third-place finisher in the first round, singer Miroslav Skoro, who ran on a nationalist platform.

Her popularity took a hit before Christmas, when she was filmed singing Happy Birthday and giving a cake to Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic. He’s fighting graft accusations over the granting of preferential access to stalls at Zagreb’s Christmas market.

The scandal, in which Bandic denies wrongdoing, comes at a sensitive time for the Adriatic nation of 4.2 million, which joined the EU in 2013 and took over the EU’s six-month rotating presidency on Jan. 1. During the term, it will organize meetings that may decide important issues including Brexit and the bloc’s next seven-year budget.

The bloc is scrutinizing Croatia’s readiness to adopt the euro and join Schengen, the EU’s passport-free travel zone. With corruption concerns delaying similar efforts in nearby Bulgaria, the prospect of the president supporting an official who’s spent much of his career fighting graft accusations may send the wrong signal.

It’s also adding to headaches for Plenkovic, who’s trying to rein in a bulging bureaucracy, stem the outflow of workers to richer EU nations and improve corruption that’s seen as the bloc’s fifth-worst by Transparency International.

“The presidential election doesn’t get its importance from the candidates, because they have a limited scope of authority, but as an indicator of strength of political parties behind them,” said Nenad Zakosek, political science professor at the University of Zagreb.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jasmina Kuzmanovic in Zagreb at jkuzmanovic@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey, Marion Dakers

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