History, Postwar Croatia

The war and appeals to patriotism made political dissent suspect, helping to sustain Tudjman’s and the CDU’s popularity. Tudjman and the CDU also benefited from their almost total control of the mass media and manipulation of a fragmented opposition. In the general election of August 1992, the CDU again won an absolute majority in the bicameral parliament, and Tudjman won a second five-year term as president. In the Chamber of Representatives elections in October 1995, the CDU’s majority was cut to 75 of 127 seats; in municipal elections at the same time, the party lost Zagreb and several other cities. However, Tudjman refused to permit installation of a non-CDU government in Zagreb, claiming that a capital city must be governed by the same party that runs the country.

In elections to the Chamber of Counties in April 1997 the CDU increased its majority from 37 to 41 of 65 seats, and in June Tudjman won a third presidential term with 61 percent of the vote. Election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) criticized the process, citing favoritism for Tudjman in the state-controlled media, vastly unequal campaign resources, and denial of voting rights to ethnic Serbs still living in Croatia. The European Union (EU) cited the regime’s authoritarian tendencies as a reason why Croatia was not among five formerly Communist states, including neighboring Slovenia, invited to start the process of joining the EU in 1997.

In January 1998 eastern Slavonia and Baranja were finally turned over to Croatia. The last UN troops departed, although UN observers stayed to monitor treatment of the district’s Serbs until September. A slow exodus by Serbs, complaining of job discrimination and harassment, continued.

Tudjman died of cancer in December 1999. He was succeeded by parliamentary speaker Vlatko Pavletic, who served as interim president until a special presidential election was held in February 2000. Stepjan Mesic, leader of the Croatian People’s Party, won the election, defeating Drazen Budisa of the Croatian Social Liberal Party. Mesic pledged to push for closer ties to the West, including membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the EU. Mesic’s election followed voting for seats in the Chamber of Representatives in January 2000, in which a center-left opposition coalition roundly defeated Tudjman’s CDU. The coalition included the Social Democratic Party and the Social Liberal Party, which were loosely allied with four other parties.