Croatia political briefing: Crisis of Social Democratic Values in Croatia and Intra-Party Elections in SDP

ISSN: 2560-1601

                                                                                         Vol. 33, No. 1 (HR)

                                                                                               October 2020

                                         Croatia political briefing:
     Crisis of Social Democratic Values in Croatia and Intra-Party
                                             Elections in SDP
                                             Valentino Petrović

                                                                  1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11.

                                                                  +36 1 5858 690
Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft.
                                                                  office@china-cee.eu
Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin
Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping                             china-cee.eu

2017/01

Crisis of Social Democratic Values in Croatia and Intra-Party Elections in
                                               SDP

      Summary

      This paper will analyze the backlash of Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Croatia in light
of its poor result on 2020 parliamentary elections and resignation of Davor Bernardić as head
of the party. Furthermore, through the European context, the paper will find additional causes
of social democratic stagnation in Croatia with regards to economic and identity cleavage.
Finally, it will present the results of intra-party elections in SDP that took place in late
September and early October.

      Introduction

      After a devastating result on parliamentary elections held in July, Davor Bernardić
stepped down from the position of Social Democratic Party (SDP) president as the SDP-led
Restart coalition won only 41 seat in Croatian Parliament. During his presidency of Croatian
largest center-left party, Bernardić was constantly criticized for the lack of leadership skills, his
uncharismatic appearance and poor party program. However, under his wing, SDP managed to
counterpart the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) on 2019 European elections when the
party won 4 mandates in European Parliament with 18,71% of the popular vote. HDZ also won
4 mandates with 22,72% of votes which was seen as a failure. In 2019/2020 presidential
elections, Zoran Milanović, former leader of SDP, managed to win the nations trust over then-
president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović and became Croatian 5th head of state. The pools projected
a comfortable win of HDZ on both European and presidential elections, not only due to HDZ
being a more trust-worthy option, but for the weakness of SDP under Bernardić. Yet, it is still
debatable whether these positive results were a part of a newly-founded homogeneity within
SDP or were they a merely short-term success based on people’s poor perception of HDZ during
the European election campaign, and Milanović’s individual quality and domination over
Grabar-Kitarović during the presidential race. With a benefit of hindsight, we could argue for
the latter, as Croatian social democracy is in deep intellectual, ideological and structural crisis
for many years.

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Differences Between CEE Countries and Croatia

      Recently, there here have been many studies on social democracy downfall in occidental
and post-socialist Europe and, consequently, many authors in Croatia went on to suggest how,
and to what extent, this process has affected Croatian center-left parties, especially SDP. First
and foremost, we have to underline the Croatian context in order to approach this issue and
make comparisons of social democracy development in rest of Central and Eastern European
countries, on the one hand, and Croatia, on the other. In her paper on SDP government during
the 2011-2015 period, Danijela Dolenec argues that during the 1990s social democratic parties
in Poland and Hungary have participated in competitive party systems as pluralism in political
arena was evolving, while Croatian party system was monolithic and political opposition was
often accused of betrayal if they had dared to counter any decision imposed by governing HDZ.
Thus, any attempt of SDP to participate in political arena was seen as illegitimate as they were
related to previous, communist regime. Furthermore, Dolenec points out that social democratic
parties in Poland and Hungary came to power in 1993 and 1994, respectively, soon after the
first multiparty elections, while in Croatia, SDP won their first election race in 2001, only after
the death of Franjo Tuđman, first Croatian president and president of HDZ.

      If we take a look at the ideological context, we could argue that economic liberalism
became “the only game in town” especially in years after the European Union started to
proclaim single market as their primary goal at the expense of welfare state. After the
dissolution of USSR, post-socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe were urged to make
a swift economic transition to capitalism which eventually led to lower levels of employment
and rising levels of inequality, however, this change was inevitable since all those countries,
including Croatia, aimed at the European Union membership and membership in other
international organizations. In the same paper, Dolenec claims that such understanding of
political economy is the reason why political actors often tend to have opposing views on other
matters during the pre-election campaigns, for example, regarding identity. As centripetal
forces were responsible for the convergence of economic beliefs among right- and left-wing
actors, parties are now using identity cleavage to differentiate themselves from the other. This
is especially the case in Croatia where almost every election campaign ends up with discussion
on certain political actor’s “family tree”, discussion on national minority rights and most
recently, in 2020 parliamentary elections, women rights and right to an abortion.

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A Convergence in Identity?

      This convergence of economic segment of ideology towards market liberalism has
negatively affected SDP more than any other Croatian party as many argue that SDP has lost
its authenticity and shifted away from the “social” part of their party name. If we stay a little
while on identity cleavage, by looking at political behavior and verbal language of some of their
members, sometimes even leaders, we could say that centripetal forces are slowly becoming
dominant even in this sphere as well, as it happens quite often that SDP’s electoral narrative
borrows some of HDZ’s rhetoric’s. For example, out of fear that they will be marked as
“communists” or “traitors”, some SDP members started to emphasize religion, their devotion
to family values, Homeland War and Croatian veterans, as if those values are something that
was previously unusual or alienated from them as Croatian citizens. Of course, such discourse
has been, and still is, more related to HDZ’s electorate, but this example of SDP using patriotic
values should not be perceived solely as party’s program malfunction. However, left-oriented
electorate in Croatia is far more interested in issues like human and minority rights, civic
education, equal opportunities, social justice, decent and fair wages for workers. Unfortunately,
working class has remained only a phrase in SDP’s party manifesto that provoked many to
suggest that SDP has become more market oriented, in line with economic liberalism, while
HDZ has become an apologist of social policies. A social issue where SDP failed to capitalize
is this year’s Zagreb earthquake. Instead of passing a law that would guarantee safety and
security to citizens who lost their homes, SDP voted for Parliament dissolution and early
elections, thus, enabling the green-left platform We Can! to structure a large portion of their
campaign around this unfortunate event and take considerable amount of left-oriented electorate
away from SDP.

      Intra-party Elections in SDP

      Davor Bernardić’s resignation showed the real colors behind the SDP intra-party
alliances, as it was more interesting to debate on possible candidates for the position of party’s
president than to follow the events around the formation of Plenković’s second cabinet. Peđa
Grbin, a prominent figure in SDP structure, a vocal critic of Bernardić, and a close ally of former
SDP president Zoran Milanović, soon announced his intention to run for the president. During
the election, Grbin was placed on the last position in eight electoral district, but he managed to
win 70 000 preferential votes, more than any other social democratic candidate. Even though
many were addressing the above-mentioned issues such as the lack of social democratic content,

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followed by the loss of credibility and authenticity, perhaps the key reason for the poor result
on 2020 parliamentary elections was the worn-out faces in SDP party structure. In comparison,
when Plenković became a president of HDZ, he brought some new, younger, people into party
structure and soon afterwards that same generation of politicians had become ministers in his
first and second cabinet. However, we need to take into account that youth is no guarantee of
expertise and efficiency, especially in this case. SDP, on the other hand, has not changed
anything. During the intra-party elections Biljana Borzan, Sabina Glasovac, Ranko Ostojić and
Siniša Hajdaš Dončić were elected vice presidents. All of them were among those considered
as party opposition during Bernardić’s presidency. Borzan even went so far to call for
Bernardić’s resignation on the very eve of election night after the preliminary results came in.

      Conclusion

      Finally, Bernardić’s loudest opponent Peđa Grbin became a president after he won
approximately 65% of votes in runoff against Željko Kolar who won 35%. Both men urged for
party unity and emphasized membership homogeneity in upcoming period. Before the
elections, Grbin said that his number one priority will be to allow every member of party to
vote since only one third of party membership was able to cast their vote during this intra-party
race. He then emphasized financial consolidation as second priority. Kolar said that the party
has to prepare for local and municipal elections in 2021. Interestingly enough, they did not
mention the resurgence of social democratic values in a so-called Social Democratic Party.

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