Prime Minister and HDZ leader Andrej Plenkovic said on Wednesday that the Social Democratic Party (SDP) is "a thieving organisation". He was reacting to the statement by SDP leader Sinisa Hajdas-Doncic that the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) is "a criminal organisation."

This is tit for tat, said Plenkovic at the beginning of his cabinet meeting in Zagreb.

“We remind the entire Croatian public that the SDP is a thieving organisation that committed a case of vote theft in the last internal party elections (in Split). They made it public themselves. There is also a former secretary general from Pedja Grbin’s term (as SDP leader) who has been charged with criminal offences in the party,” Plenkovic said, alluding to Vedran Babic.

The secretary general of the strongest opposition party, Vedran Babic, resigned in 2023 after being accused of forging signatures for a nomination for prefect of the Slavonski Brod-Posavina district in the 2021 local elections.

Babic and four of his colleagues allegedly copied 22 signatures from one SDP list to another SDP list in the local elections in Slavonski Brod two years ago, the then SDP chairman Pedja Grbin said at a press conference in mid-April 2023.

This offence is punishable by up to three years in prison.