Croatians hope for a new dawn

By Vaiju Naravane

PARIS, JAN. 24. Croatians braved icy conditions to vote for a new President, one they hope will mark a departure from the authoritarian, nationalist regime established by Franjo Tudjman who died in office on December 10.

All the three front-runners have promised Croatia's 42 million voters to banish corruption which flourished during Tudjman's nine-year rule and to adopt ``true democracy''. All three, Mr. Stipe Mesic, Mr. Drazen Budisa and Mr. Mate Granic, have vowed to integrate more closely with Europe and ask for membership of the European Union.

Mr. Stipe Mesic who is leading the polls with 31 per cent of the vote, was the last federal Yugoslav President before resigning in disgust at the ethnic wrangling that characterised Yugoslavia's final days as a unified nation. Mr. Mesic remained close to Tudjman until 1994 when the two fell apart over Tudjman's continuous aid to nationalistic Croats in Bosnia.

Mr. Mate Granic is the candidate of Tudjman's HDZ party and served as the former autocrat's Foreign Minister. He is expected to win the support of Croats in Hercegovina who continue to dream of a ``greater Croatia'' which would include the Croat dominated areas of western Hercegovina and other parts of Bosnia.

Mr. Drazen Budisa, who is second in the polls with 23 per cent of the vote represents the Liberal Democrat-Social Democrat alliance which won a landslide victory in the recently concluded parliamentary polls.

Mr. Stipe Mesic, told The Hindu: ``During the reign of Tudjman, it seemed as if Croatia was still at war. And that is why the former President looked upon any offer of mediation or help coming from the outside as meddling in the internal affairs of the country. With the result that Croatia found itself nowhere, not even in the third queue for membership of the European Union. To put it simply and non-politically, Croatia was told to go to hell.''

Croatia never respected the Dayton accords which put an end to the fighting in Bosnia Hercegovina. On the contrary, Tudjman desperately tried to make his country ``ethically pure,'' obstructing, in whatever way possible, the return of some 200,000 Serb refugees from Croatia's Krajina region who had been obliged to flee because of the war. Tudjman's Balkan politics had two direct results: an exacerbation of pan-Croat nationalism, as if the dream of Greater Croatia had never been laid to rest, and a total indifference to international calls to hand over war criminals to the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia.

This irritates western allies who were initially very supportive of Croatia and made the country shunned by western Europe and the U.S. The World Bank and the IMF were not forthcoming with soft loans. The economic fall out of these isolationist policies have been disastrous.

The three candidates have all promised to pull Croatia out of this quagmire. Mr. Stipe Mesic is the most likely of the three to win. His election will deal a blow to Bosnian Coat hardliners whose aspirations to secede from Bosnia Hercegovina were supported and financed by Tudjman's Government.

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Section  : International
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