Politics of Croatia

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The Republic of Croatia (Croatian: Republika Hrvatska) is a parliamentary democracy with an elected president. It adopted its current constitution on December 22, 1990, and declared independence from Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991.

Amendments to the Constitution have happened four times:

December 15, 1997 -- additional minority rights and verbiage changes
September 11, 2000 -- changed from a semi-presidential to a parliamentary system; parliament name reverted to historic Hrvatski Sabor
March 28, 2001 -- Chamber of Counties abolished, the Parliament becomes unicameral
June 15, 2001 -- administrivia

Contents

1 Judiciary branch

2 Legislative Branch

3 Executive branch

4 Regional government

5 History of political parties and events

6 See also

Judiciary branch

The Supreme Court (Vrhovni sud) of the Republic of Croatia is the highest court. Court hearings are open, and judgments are made publicly, except in issues of privacy of the accused. Judges are appointed for eight year terms.

See http://www.vsrh.hr/

The Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud) of the Republic of Croatia decides on the constitutionality of laws and has the right to repeal a law it finds unconstitutional. It also can impeach the president. The body is made up of 13 judges. The president of the Constitutional Court is elected by the court for a 4-year term.

See http://www.usud.hr/

The State Judiciary Council (Državno Sudbeno Vijeće) of the Republic appoints judges of the Supreme Court. It is a body consisting of a president and 14 members proposed and elected by the Parliament for 8-year terms.

Legislative Branch

The Croatian legislature is the Hrvatski Sabor. The Sabor is unicameral which can have between 100 and 160 deputies (152 in 2003). All representatives are elected by popular vote to serve four-year terms.

The Chamber of Counties or Županijski Dom used to be composed of three deputies from each of the 21 counties (županije). However, as it had no practical power over the Chamber of Representatives, in 2001, the Chamber was abolished and whatever powers it had were transferred directly to the county governments.

The Sabor meets in public sessions in two periods: January 15 to June 30, and September 15 to December 15. Extra sessions can be called by the President of the Republic, by the President of the Parliament or by Government. The powers of the legislature include enactment and amendment of the constitution; passage of laws; adoption of the state budget; declarations of war and peace; alteration of the boundaries of the Republic; calling referenda; carrying out elections, appointments, and relief of office; supervising the work of the Government of Croatia and other holders of public powers responsible to the Sabor; and granting amnesty.

Decisions are made based on a majority vote if more than half of the Chamber is present, except in cases of national rights and constitutional issues.

See http://www.sabor.hr/

The last parliamentary elections were held November 23 2003.

Last election results

Executive branch

The main executive power of Croatian state is the government ("vlada"), presided by the Prime Minister. The government ministers (the cabinet) are appointed by the prime minister with the consent of the Parliament. The prime minister is the head of government, appointed by the President with the consent of the Parliament who takes his duty when Parliament gives its consent by absolute majority of all representatives.

See http://www.vlada.hr/

Current government: Prime Minister: Ivo Sanader (since December 23 2003);
Deputy Prime Ministers: Jadranka Kosor, Andrija Hebrang (all since December 23, 2003)
Government ministers are from Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) except from one minister from Democratic Centre (DC).

The President of the Republic of Croatia is the head of state and is elected by popular vote for a five-year term. A president may not serve more than two terms. The president has limited executive powers and limited veto, but is still the commander in chief of the armed forces.

See http://www.predsjednik.hr/

Last election was held on 7 February 2000; next to be held on 2 January 2005, see 2005 Presidential elections)

Last election results: Stjepan (Stipe) Mesić elected president, instated February 18 2000;
See 2000 Presidential elections of Croatia

Regional government

The country is composed of 20 counties (županijas) and one city (grad, Zagreb). The counties and county centers are:

History of political parties and events

The Croatian Communist Party, was the only party during socialist Yugoslavia, 1945-1990. The change of the name to League of Communists of Croatia (Savez Komunista Hrvatske, SKH) in the fifties intended to emphasize advisory role of the party, while actual power is supposed to be in hands of the working class. There was very few controversies and fractional clashes in the SKH. Among the most important is so called "Croatian Spring" in 1971 when some leaders of the SKH, most notable Savka Dapcevic Kucar and Miko Tripalo attempted to increase political and economical independence of the Croatia from other Yugoslav republics. Although "Croatian spring" was broken, the leaders lost their political position and were forced into isolation, and less important leaders are persecuted, practically all intentions of the mentioned national leaders were accepted and introduced in Yugoslavian constitution from 1974.

That constitution was relatively unfortunate in a sense that it did not delimited responsibilities of the republics and federation in Yugoslavia clearly. As a result, when Leage of Communists lost its unity and authority, and republics started to make opposite, even aggressive political movements, central governmant of the Yugoslavia was unable to act. As a result, neither peaceful break up, nor military putch was possible in the time of crisis, and country ended in bloody, tragical war.

In the situation when Serbs leaders, especially members of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic started to threat Croatia and prepare for a war, first multi-party elections, 1990 were performed. League of Communist changed its policy and name to "Party of Democratic Changes" (SDP), however, impression of the people was that it party cannot respond on the Milosevic's threats adequately. The right-wing was represented by Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), led by communist general, later Croatian nationalist and disident Franjo Tudjman, "Croatian Party of Right" let by Dobroslav Paraga, later Anto Djapic, "Croatian State Movement" led by Ivica Stedul, small "Croatian Party" under the leadership of Hrvoje Sosic, "Croatian Republican Party" composed mostly of Croatian emigrants from Argentina, led by Ivo Korsky, who, surprisingly, never returned to Croatia.

Somewhere in the between of SDP and HDZ, there was so called "coalition" of many parties, like Croatian Democratic Party (HDS), Union of Social Democrats of Croatia (SDSH), Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS), led by persons known from "Croatian spring", including S. Dapcevic Kucar and M. Tripalo. However, coalition got surprisingly few votes during that elections, and HDZ won easily.

Role of the HDZ in the wars in ex-Yugoslavia is not clearly determined yet. Although the party finally defended Croatia successefully, there are indications that it happened as a part of the agreeement with Serbs for mutual division of another Yugoslavian republic, Bosnia and Hertzegovina. Also, increased crime in all parts of the society and growing personal cult of Franjo Tudjman caused revival of the popularity of, at one moment, almost dead ex-communist party.

During HDZ-s role, many far right parties is organized, including M. Schwartz's illegal anti-semitic "New Croatian Right", "Croatian Homeland Order", A. Prkacin's "New Croatia", Gabelica's "Croatian Clean Party of Right" etc. Also, promising moderately left parties like Suvar's "Socialistic Working Party", or Horvat's "Social Democratic Union." ar formed. Marginal role is played by "Party of Natural Law" connected with Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Vujic's SDSH united with SDP. HSLS splited on two parties, led by their charismatic leaders, Vlado Gotovac's Liberal Party, and more national, Drazen Budisa's won administrative control over HSLS. In following years, these two leaders, especially Budisa led inconsistent policy which resulted in significant drop of the support for once third most important party in Croatia. D. Budisa even once left the party, but he was persuaded to return back.

For the 2000 elections, the Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDP) and the Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS) formed a coalition as did the Croatian Peasants Party (HSS), Croatian People's Party (HNS), Liberal Party of Croatia (LS), and Istrian Democratic Assembly (IDS).

The six-party left-center coalition was in power until June 2001 when IDS left the governing coalition over its inability to win greater autonomy for Istria.

HSLS split (again; the initial splitoff formed LS) in 2002; the main faction left the government while a dissenting faction formed LIBRA and stayed in power.

The SDP-led coalition remained in power until the legislative elections of 2003, when they narrowly lost the majority to HDZ and other right-center parties.

HDZ formed a government in December 2003, even though they haven't formed a major coalition with parties like HSS and HSP. It appears, however, that new HDZ, under the leadership of I. Sanader, is positioned significantly more on the center than early HDZ was.

Accession to membership of the European Union is presently a stated national goal for most mainstream parties, although they vary in the amount of cooperation with the EU rules. The main issues remain in the areas of post-war recovery: both political (refugee return, war crime trials) and economic (agricultural import/export policy).

In the time of the writing this article, the Communist party of Croatia is not yet organized, the closest and the most promising is probably Stipe Suvar's "Socialist Worker Party."

Although independence of the Croatia is almost forced by actions performed by aggressive Serbian politicians, led by Slobodan Milošević, and accepted by great majority of the Croatian citizens, last 15 years did not clearly confirmed supposed benefits of return to capitalist, democratic system.

There is little doubt that some of the human rights are set to higher level, as for example right for a free political speech, and it appears that there is some increase in life standard, on the other side, increased crime rate on all levels of society, lack of security, inconsistent law enforcement, increasing foreign debt and cultural crisis are few elements that arise doubts and suggest that claims about superiority of the democracy shouldn't be taken without further discussion; instead, serious and sober analyzes and evaluation of a communist and democratic models seems to be necessary.