Vukovar Mayor Ivan Penava is considering running for president of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party as a way to see to it that war criminals are finally punished.

“This is the first time that I’m talking about running in intra-party elections. The anniversary is approaching and I had to decide what the smartest thing to do was from the aspect of resolving the fate of the victims. When I decided that protest rallies are counterproductive and that it’s no good to wait for a year with no results, I had to think of the best course of action,” Penava says in Saturday’s issue of the Vecernji List daily.

Penava is considering running for HDZ president as the only way to put the focus on and resolve the problem of unpunished Homeland War crimes given that, he says, state institutions have done nothing about that in the year since the big rally held in Vukovar to protest against the slow prosecution of war crimes.

After Davor Ivo Stier, Miro Kovac and likely Tomislav Karamarko, Penava could be the fourth counter-candidate to incumbent HDZ president Andrej Plenkovic in intra-party elections next spring, Vecernji List said.