Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic expressed his satisfaction with the results of the parliamentary election on 17 April after the meetings of the Praesidium and the National Committee of his Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party on Monday evening and pointed out that they will form a parliamentary majority.

“We have achieved a great success by winning 61 seats, with a high voter turnout of 62.5 per cent. The HDZ won in nine out of eleven constituencies,” Plenkovic said, adding that he would once again nominate Gordan Jandrokovic as parliamentary speaker at the constituent session of parliament.

He also announced that he would work with the political parties willing to co-operate with the HDZ to form a parliamentary majority of at least 76 MPs in order to obtain a mandate for the third government formation.

The HDZ leader said that they had held initial meetings with the Domovinski pokret party as a prelude to structured talks and expressed confidence that they would reach an agreement on cooperation. He added that last week they had held talks with representatives of ethnic minorities and a number of other elected MPs, with the exception of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Most and Mozemo.

“In the coming days, we will also talk to other MPs,” Plenkovic said, emphasising that Croatia needs political stability, the formation of the parliament as soon as possible, the formation of the government and the continuation of work on economic growth and development.

In response to a question from the press, Plenkovic said that the HDZ had formed a negotiating team consisting of himself, HDZ deputy chairman Tomo Medved, vice president Ivan Anusic, secretary-general Krunoslav Katicic and Marko Milic as head of the HDZ president’s Office.

Regarding the rights of ethnic minorities, given the fact that the Domovinski pokret does not want to cooperate with the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS), he said that the rights of minorities will remain exactly the same as before and pointed out that minority MPs have been loyal and voted in favour of all identity laws in parliament.

“We will try to find solutions that will ensure the functioning of the parliamentary majority and with which everyone will be satisfied,” said Plenkovic.

Referring to the SDP party and their “uncle”, President Zoran Milanovic, Plenkovic said that they suffered a heavy defeat in the election, as they won 42 seats after eight years in opposition. He added that he would “prevent the losers from pretending to be winners”