Former Homeland Movement (DP) deputy president Mario Radic confirmed in Osijek on Sunday that he had left the party, a junior partner in the ruling coalition, and announced the creation of a new political framework for future activities.

“Yesterday, I, along with the majority of members, left the party. I believe almost everyone in Osijek has left the DP. We will see how well the others manage, and we will create a new project. What it will be called and how it will function, we’ll decide when we all come together,” he told the press.

Asked to clarify this initiative, Radic said the DP had a caucus in the Zagreb City Assembly, but all members have left the party, as well as those in the Osijek-Baranja County Assembly.

The DP is no longer a party represented in the European Parliament, so we need a framework within which people can function as a party, Radic said.

Asked about a mass exodus from the DP, he said it was difficult to count at this moment, but that entire party branches were leaving.

Asked if the ruling HDZ interfered in yesterday’s DP intraparty elections, Radic said part of the HDZ certainly got involved, but not the entire HDZ, as he hasn’t noticed that Prime Minister and HDZ president Andrej Plenković is happy with what is currently happening.

“We will still see who is aligned with whom and in what way,” Radic said when asked whether the parliamentary majority was threatened.

Asked to comment on DP president Ivan Penava’s claim that yesterday’s intraparty elections were a “conflict between the core of the DP and technocrats,” Radic suggested that Penava “would do best to go to the President’s Office so that President (Zoran) Milanović can explain it to him, as that’s his ideological essence.”

It was an ideological war because we are not for Milanovic, he added.

Penava was re-elected president of the Homeland Movement on Saturday with unanimous support from 64 delegates who remained in the hall after his opponent Radić and his supporters walked out of the intraparty electoral convention.