Croatia Election Campaign Ends

23 11 2007 Zagreb _ The three-week election campaign ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary polls in Croatia ends at midnight on Friday.

The election silence for the Croatian diaspora has already started because of the time difference: polling stations in Australia will open while it is still Saturday in Europe.

The latest opinion polls suggest the result may be a tight finish between the governing centre-right Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, and the opposition Social Democrats, SDP.

The last published survey, from pollsters Valicon, published on Friday, indicates the HDZ is heading for 33.5 per cent of the vote and the SDP for 31.7 per cent.

If the polls are right, Sunday’s elections will be the closest of the five held since multi-party voting was restored in Croatia in 1990.

However, the polls do not include respondents among Croatian voters outside the country who tend to vote for the HDZ.

According to the State Election Commission, just over 400,000 Croatian citizens who live abroad have the right to vote in the elections. They make up around 10 per cent of the electorate.

They will be able to cast their ballots in 265 polling stations in 53 countries worldwide.

Almost half of the foreign polling stations, 124, are in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, where many Croats, who have never lived in Croatia, will be voting.

The Croatian diaspora’s right to vote was a controversial feature of an otherwise lacklustre election campaign with the Social Democrats saying that they will severely restrict that provision if they win power.

On the key foreign policy objectives of joining the EU and NATO, expected over the next two to three years, there is consensus among the two main rival parties, and much of the rest of Croatia’s political establishment.

Polling stations in Croatia will close at 1900 hours [1800 Greenwich Mean Time] on Sunday.