Mario Radic, Marijan Pavlicek, Marina Logarusic and Zlatko Hasanbegovic. Photo: Drazen Jurmanovic
Several far-right parties in Croatia, the Home and National Gathering, DOMiNO, Croatian Sovereigns, the Blok for Croatia, and the Croatian Party of Rights, HSP, signed a memorandum of political cooperation in Vukovar on Tuesday about running jointly in the next parliamentary elections.
Sovereignist president Marijan Pavlicek said the four parties “will create a unique bloc without which it will not be possible to form a future government, and that government will be directed towards traditional values.”
“I believe that voters will know how to reward this. We will move forward with a clear conscience,” he added.
Parties like the ruling Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, with which the sovereignist parties share some views, as well as Most, are acceptable partners for future cooperation, it was said.
Zlatko Hasanbegovic, president of the Bloc for Croatia, recalled that the parties signing the memorandum had already formed a bloc in the last local elections and are now moving forward, convinced that voters will recognise what they stand for.
Mario Radic, president of DOMiNO, said Croatia needs unity on the right and a government committed to Christian and traditional values.
“On Friday, parliament voted on the state budget, which allocates 13 per cent more funds for national minorities, including the Serbian National Council, SNV, thanks to the votes of the [right-wing] Homeland Movement. This is probably a reward for the exhibition on Dejan Medakovic and Serbian Women in Vukovar. With that [act] alone, they [the Homeland Movement] have excluded themselves from any possible coalition,” Radic said. He was referring to the SNV’s exhibition on Medakovic, a Serbian art historian, writer, and president of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, SANU, from 1998 to 2003.
All four parties back strong nationalistic programmes.
Radic added that the “first condition” for the new bloc’s participation in a future government is taking over the Ministry of Culture, adding that being right-oriented does not mean just attending concerts by the nationalist singer Marko Perkovic Thompson and acting opportunistically, but by expressing rightist values through the state budget.
According to Marina Logarusic, president of the HSP, the coalition was formed following the last presidential elections, “when voters expressed dissatisfaction because they [the right] did not unite behind a single candidate.
“We corrected that by running together in the local elections. Now it is up to us to transfer that success to the national level,” Logarusic said. Parliamentary elections are due to be held in Croatia by April 30, 2028.
Currently, of the 151 seats in the Croatian parliament, the four parties have only four MPs in total. The Croatian Sovereignists have one, and DOMiNO, which was formed by a split from the Homeland Movement, has three. By running together in the elections, their chances of more seats increase because fewer votes will be wasted.
Judging by the first joint public appearance and the criticism they directed towards the Homeland Movement, which has seven seats in parliament and is part of the coalition government with the HDZ, the new bloc is likely counting on attracting some of its voters.
However, until now, far-right parties in Croatian elections have never received more than 10 to 15 per cent of the vote.
