Croatia’s conservative government wins parliamentary election

Croatia’s ruling party won the recent election on Wednesday by a large margin, but they still need help from far-right groups to keep their power. The election was about a fight between the president and prime minister.

The election was between the ruling conservative party led by the Prime Minister and an alliance of centrist and left-wing parties led by the President and his party.

The electoral commission said that the HDZ won 60 seats out of 151 in the parliament after counting over 90% of the votes. The SDP won 42 seats. The far-right Statehood Movement won 14 seats, which means it will have a lot of power in deciding the next government.

“Tomorrow we will begin to work on creating a new majority in Parliament to form our third government,” Plenkovic said in his speech after winning. “I want to say good job to the other parties that lost to the HDZ. ”

More than half of the people voted, which was a lot more than before, even before the polls were closed.

Croatia, a country in Europe, had an election. They are also part of the European Union and NATO. Croatia is facing problems like high inflation, not enough workers, illegal immigration, and lots of corruption.

The race for Croatia’s 151-seat parliament was important because it would affect the country’s domestic policies and also the unity of the EU as it deals with instability from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

If the HDZ remains in power like we think they will, the country will keep helping Ukraine in its battle against Russia and stay on a pro-Western path. If SDP does well, it could win the European Parliament election in June and the presidential election in December. It could change the HDZ’s control of politics for a long time and might allow for more pro-Russia influence in the country, like in Hungary and Slovakia.

The HDZ has mostly been in charge since Croatia became independent from Yugoslavia in 1991. The Balkan country joined the European Union in 2013, and recently became part of Europe’s passport-free travel area and started using the euro currency.

In Croatia, the president doesn’t have much power and mostly does ceremonial things. The prime minister has most of the political power. The election was like the last part of a long competition between Plenkovic and Milanovic.

After Milanovic set a date for the election and said he wanted to be the prime minister, he started promoting the SDP. Croatia’s highest court judges said it was against the rules when leaders tried to make the change.

The judges said the president can’t try to become prime minister, or take part in elections or support a political party unless he quits his job first.

Milanovic said no and didn’t listen to the highest court. He kept on supporting the left-wing group.

Milanovic said that Plenkovic and the HDZ have been very corrupt and have stolen a lot of money from the government. He is talking about scandals from the past and present, some of which have gone to court.

Plenkovic has been in charge of the government since 2016. He has said many times that Milanovic, if he becomes the prime minister, would move the country further away from the EU and closer to Russia.

Milanovic has spoken in favor of Russia during the war in Ukraine. He doesn’t want Ukrainian soldiers to be trained in Croatia or weapons to be sent to Ukraine because he thinks it will make the war last longer. He also didn’t like the EU’s rules about Ukraine.