Bruna Esih was unanimously re-elected leader of the conservative Independents for Croatia party at its election convention in the coastal city of Zadar on Monday.

“This election convention, organised according to the statute and all laws, has confirmed that I am still the president of Independents for Croatia. We have elected new leadership and members of the governing bodies,” Esih told the press after the convention.

At the same, followers of her leadership rival Zlatko Hasanbegovic were holding an election convention in Zagreb, of which Esih said earlier that that was “clearly an attempt to take over the party illegally.”

“No matter how much this may have shaken us, we must be even stronger and prove ourselves through our work in the field, because without those results conventions don’t mean a thing,” she said.

Asked about Hasanbegovic’s future in the party, Esih said she did not know what was happening in Zagreb.

Esih said earlier that the Zadar convention was being attended by delegates from five of the party’s six county organisations, the sixth being the Zagreb branch which is led by Hasanbegovic.

Hasanbegovic, the party’s political secretary, said in Zagreb that the election convention in Zadar was against the statute and that the presidency members who had gathered in Zagreb were refusing to take part in Esih’s “insane suicidal move”.