HDZ president and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Monday that he called on voters in Zagreb, where the party's mayoral candidate will not be in the 30 May runoff, to vote according to their conscience, but underlined the HDZ's ideological position as a centre-right party.

Asked by the press if the HDZ would back one of the two candidates in the Zagreb runoff, Plenkovic said the HDZ was also “a state-building, patriotic, people’s, Christian Democrat party, therefore I think that position is always clear. It’s up to our voters to decide.”

He said the party’s Zagreb branch would meet in the next few days and decide whether to back either of the candidates. He added that he would vote in the runoff.

Plenkovic said the 45.15% of the vote won by Tomislav Tomasevic of the We Can! and Zagreb Is Ours! coalition, which he described as “the expression of the will of a respectable number of citizens,” was due to the legacy of former mayor Milan Bandić.

Plenkovic said Tomasevic’s convincing lead in the first round was also a result of “the broad public support for the We Can! platform,” adding that all political parties should envy it for such treatment.

Total failure of the Social Democratic Party

Also, he added, the elections in Zagreb have shown “the total failure of the SDP.” After years of being first or second in Zagreb, the SDP “has practically disappeared,” he said.

Speaking of the HDZ’s results in other parts of Croatia, Plenkovic reiterated that they “confirmed that the HDZ is the strongest and a victorious political party.”

“For now the HDZ has already won in 208 units of local and regional government, that’s about 37% of the total number of cities and municipalities. In four counties we won in the first round,” he said, adding that the party was also satisfied with the good results in Osijek, Rijeka and Split where, he said, he is confident that Vice Mihanovic will be elected mayor in the runoff.

“Overall, we believe that the results we have achieved are exceptionally good and that they will be even better after the runoff.”

Plenkovic reiterated that the HDZ’s candidate for Zagreb mayor, Davor Filipovic, had achieved a great result despite coming fourth.

Filipovic said the HDZ’s Zagreb branch would decide whether to support one of the two candidates in the Zagreb mayoral runoff.