Labour Minister Marin Piletic said on Wednesday that he believes citizens will show their opinion on the candidacy of incumbent President Zoran Milanovic for another term as head of state just as they did in the last parliamentary election.

“The Croatian Democratic Union is in the process of internal party elections. (…) When this process is completed and all bodies have been constituted, we assume that we will definitely nominate our candidate for president in the next legislative period,” said Piletic, referring to the HDZ party’s candidate for the office of Croatian president.

The current president, Zoran Milanovic, has confirmed that he will run for another term in December.

“We expected the current president Milanovic to be relieved of his duties because he has announced that he will certainly not stay in Pantovcak… One day he wants to be prime minister, another day president, he is violating the constitution,” the minister said, alluding to Milanovic’s statements ahead of the last Croatian parliamentary election in mid-April, when he said he would be the SDP’s candidate for prime minister, but would not step down as head of state.

Transport Minister Oleg Butkovic said that Milanovic was treating the state like a “jukebox”.

Butkovic issued a statement on Facebook in which he wrote that Milanovic no longer wanted to be prime minister, but now wanted to become president again.

“For you, the state is like a jukebox, it only serves to fulfil your wishes,” Butkovic wrote, adding that Milanovic had not yet answered his questions from the run-up to the parliamentary election.

During the election campaign, the two officials had made serious accusations against each other. Butkovic wrote that he felt as if he had to come to Pantovcak, the president’s office, to get answers.