{"id":44403,"date":"2025-01-13T03:01:26","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T03:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/?p=44403"},"modified":"2025-01-13T03:01:30","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T03:01:30","slug":"croatian-president-re-elected-in-landslide-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/?p=44403","title":{"rendered":"Croatian president re-elected in landslide victory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BBC: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voters in Croatia have re-elected Zoran Milanovic to a second term, after he won almost three-quarters of votes cast in the country’s presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a dismal result for his opponent Dragan Primorac, who had the backing of the governing centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Primorac picked up 25 percent of the vote \u2013 the worst-ever result for Croatia’s most powerful political force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The outcome was met with a muted response from Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He declined to congratulate the winner and insisted that “Milanovic offers nothing”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milanovic said he would “offer a hand” to the prime minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presidents in Croatia fulfil a largely ceremonial role – the constitution insists they must not be a party-political figure, but act as the head of state for all citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milanovic has been a frequent critic of the governing party on issues including corruption, inflation and healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he has also frequently criticised the West’s military support for Kyiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before becoming president<\/a>, Milanovic was prime minister of Croatia from 2011 to 2016, and led the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SDP) from 2007 to 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He briefly inserted himself into the country’s parliamentary elections last year by announcing he’d be running for prime minister<\/a>, before a court ruled the move unconstitutional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response, he accused the judges of doing the bidding of the HDZ – “the gangster clique”, as he put it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The governing HDZ has been the dominant party since Croatia gained independence more than 30 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC: Voters in Croatia have re-elected Zoran Milanovic to a second term, after he won almost three-quarters of votes cast in the country’s presidential election. It was a dismal result for his opponent Dragan Primorac, who had the backing of the governing centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party. Primorac picked up 25 percent of the vote \u2013 the worst-ever result for Croatia’s most powerful political force. The outcome was met with a muted response from Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. He declined to congratulate the winner and insisted that “Milanovic offers nothing”. Milanovic said he would “offer a hand” to the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44405,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44403\/revisions\/44405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}