Croatians choose from two familiar faces when they vote for a new president on Sunday, with conservative incumbent Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic battling leftist former prime minister Zoran Milanovic for the job. The two know each other from the 1990s when they both started their diplomatic careers at the foreign ministry, and are now going head-to-head in a run-off vote.
Croatia’s first female president is a conservative who styles herself as a “woman of the people” raised in the country’s rural northwest.
She once joked that she is one of few in her line of work “who knows how to milk a cow.” The 51-year-old took office in February 2015 as the candidate of the now ruling conservative HDZ party.
She was previously foreign minister, an ambassador and NATO’s assistant secretary general.
Considered a moderate when she first took office, Grabar-Kitarovic has in recent years also tried to placate voters on the far-right. She is most notably accused of downplaying the crimes committed by the country’s World War II pro-Nazi regime, the Ustasha. A vocal fan of the controversial right-wing singer Marko Perkovic Thompson, known for his sympathies for the Ustasha regime, she also announced her reelection bid in a far-right magazine. Internationally, Grabar-Kitarovic is better known for gracing front pages with her spirited cheerleading of Croatia’s football team as they advanced to the final of the World Cup in 2018. At home her efforts to put a “common touch” on the presidency — including a lot of public singing — have been derided as fake and embarrassing stunts by critics. In the reelection campaign, she invited mockery after promising 8,000 euro ($8,920) salaries — nearly ten times the current average.
When the Zagreb native was named prime minister in 2011, aged 45, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was perceived by many as a promising young politician, free of the corruption plaguing the rival HDZ. But his government failed to live up to expectations and implement much-needed reforms, perpetuating widespread patronage and poor economic trends. His SDP lost power following 2015 elections and Milanovic stepped down as party chief after he failed again in the following year’s snap vote. He has since been running a management consultant company whose clients have included Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, according to media reports.
He has previously described himself as having a “leftist heart and conservative head”, but has been criticised for a standoffish approach towards rivals and the media. This race he is promising to make Croatia a “normal” liberal democracy, with an equal society and independent judiciary. — AFP
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