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Croatia's conservative HDZ win tight election | |
(about 17 hours later) | |
Croatia's conservative HDZ party has won Sunday's parliamentary election but is expected to seek the support of a centrist party to form a coalition. | |
HDZ won 61 of 151 seats while the Social Democrat-led four-party alliance had 54 seats. | |
Snap elections were called after the HDZ government collapsed in June over a conflict of interest scandal. | |
Croatia joined the EU in 2013 but political stalemate has prevented much-needed reforms from being carried out. | |
In its eight months in power, the HDZ-led coalition had been characterised by a shift to the right and growing antipathy towards the independent media and minorities, especially ethnic Serbs. | |
The BBC 's Guy Delauney in Zagreb described how nationalism and neighbour-bashing had become a feature of Croatian politics in recent months. | |
However, the party's new and more moderate leader, Andrej Plenkovic, has promised a "Europe-oriented" government and the HDZ ran on its own in Sunday's poll, without any of the more extreme nationalist parties. | |
It is thought Mr Plenkovic will look initially to form a coalition with the centre-right Most (Bridge) party, which won 13 seats. | |
The centre-left SDP conceded victory and drew attention to the low 53% turnout. | |
Its leader Zoran Milanovic criticised the previous "unstable and destructive" HDZ-led coalition and said what Croatia needed was a stable government. | |
Some 3.8 million people were eligible to vote in the country's second election in less than a year. | Some 3.8 million people were eligible to vote in the country's second election in less than a year. |
Read more on Croatia | Read more on Croatia |
Croatia remains one of the EU's mostly poorly performing economies despite recent positive developments linked to its EU membership. | Croatia remains one of the EU's mostly poorly performing economies despite recent positive developments linked to its EU membership. |
Almost a year of political deadlock impeded urgently needed economic reforms, with the economy relying heavily on tourism along the Adriatic coast. | |