A delegation of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), headed by party leader and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, on Friday laid a wreath and lit a candle in Veliko Trgovisce, a village in northern Croatia and the birthplace of the country's first president, Franjo Tudjman, marking the 99th anniversary of his birth in 1922.

A former general of the Yugoslav People’s Army turned historian, Tudjman had founded the nationalist HDZ party in the late 1980s before the arrival of multi-party democracy, and later led the country through its 1991-95 war of independence. Increasingly authoritarian in post-war years, he died in December 1999 from cancer, the eve of the January 2000 election. The election was won by opposition parties, thus ending a decade of HDZ rule under Tudjman.

In his address on Friday, Prime Minister Plenkovic said that Tudjman had “led Croatia to independence and freedom, together with its people and Homeland War defenders, and also to international recognition and democracy… The HDZ platform continues to be based on the values advocated by Tudjman – patriotism, statehood building, people’s (policies), and Christian Democrat policies, and the care for the interests of (ethnic) Croats in this country and abroad,” said Plenkovic.

He added that “HDZ founders” have plans to organize a conference next year marking the 100th anniversary of Tudjman’s birth.