By Dragan Markovina

Although there was not the slightest doubt on the eve of the second round that Zoran Milanović would easily win the elections and take his second and final presidential term, the only uncertainty that existed, and which ultimately ended badly for the HDZ, was whether and to what extent the party could mobilize to mitigate the catastrophic defeat of its candidate that was being announced. All previous practice said that it could, but this did not happen and Dragan Primorac was held to just over 25% of the votes.

Which is just another confirmation of the thesis that these elections are largely a message to Andrej Plenković and the HDZ. But that’s not all, and it would be neither fair nor factually accurate to deny Milanović’s role in the whole story. After all, the man achieved an epochal victory, which is why we must try to answer the question of why it happened?

And yet, one should not ignore the fact that it is incredible, but with a low turnout of barely over 44%. In other words, Zoran Milanović was overwhelmingly elected by a highly motivated group of citizens, around thirty percent of them, which is by no means a small number, but does not indicate the plebiscite support that it may seem at first glance.

So what happened? First and foremost, the core of Milanović’s vote is still made up of the basically left and liberal part of the voters, who see him primarily, if not exclusively, as the former president of the SDP and former prime minister, and the only man with leadership capacity who is capable of harming the HDZ. These people would certainly vote for anyone against the HDZ, but they vote for Milanović with particular gusto because they consider him their own and because they see that he annoys the HDZ members, all of which prevents them from seeing the reality in which it is obvious that Milanović has veered quite far to the right since he lost his position as prime minister. Hence the misunderstanding that is clearly visible in the iconography, the location of his headquarters, in the rocker’s Factory, the alternative music at the celebration and the audience that is basically left-liberal there, with what Milanović is saying, which is Tuđman’s populist sovereigntism and seriously present anti-Western rhetoric.

Which brings us to the second group of his voters, which are radical right-wingers, who hear from Milanović many of the theses that they themselves advocate, and that Plenković would never utter, and who see Milanović’s essentially substantive departure from the SDP, in whose name they are willing to ignore the iconography around him and that they will also make citizens on the left happy with their votes.

Finally, the third group of Milanović’s voters are radical anti-NATO and anti-Western leftists, for whom social democrats and liberals are almost even bigger political opponents than the right, but who see Milanović as the only man who does not advocate the fundamental values ​​and goals of the European Union.

Zoran Milanović succeeded because he managed to sell himself to very different groups in society as theirs, with the difference that he is certainly no longer a leftist or liberal, but his voters of that profile refuse to accept that.

From all of this, it is clear that the most popular theory about his popularity, which says that people vote for him because they don’t want to give all the levers of power to HDZ, doesn’t actually hold true. That is, it only holds true if we are talking about the first group of voters who would never let HDZ lead anything.

In a general and substantive sense, this is a message that there is indeed a lot of anti-Western sentiment in Croatian society, as well as a solid amount of sympathy for Russia and its foreign policy, which transcends ideological divisions, and that Zoran Milanović has managed to channel the energy of these people towards himself. Which is a field on which Andrej Plenković, a basic Europhile, simply cannot play.

All of this, of course, does not mean that the HDZ will suffer a serious defeat in the upcoming local elections, and the left-liberal opposition will win, because local elections are a very specific political game, and also one that the HDZ members care deeply about and in which infrastructure plays a crucial role.

But, that this election outcome poses before the HDZ itself the question of the party’s ideological direction in the future and that its leading man is clearly at odds with his membership and voter base over this issue, that is beyond question.

Source: Pescanik.net