Croatian President Zoran Milanovic has officially announced that the country will hold early parliamentary elections on April 17.
The news was reported by Bloomberg. In a move to facilitate voter participation, the president has also declared the day of the vote, which falls on a Wednesday, a national holiday.
A survey conducted on March 10 revealed that the conservative Croatian Democratic Union (CDU), led by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, currently enjoys the highest level of voter support. Approximately 27% of those surveyed indicated their readiness to vote for the party. The opposition Social Democratic Party trails behind with 10 percentage points less support.
Other political groups, including the right-wing "Patriotic Movement" and the center-right "Mist" party, have garnered less than 10% voter support.
Andrej Plenkovic, who has been at the helm of the Croatian government since 2016, holds the record for the longest-serving prime minister since the country's independence in 1991. The CDU, in coalition with several smaller parties and minority MPs, currently holds a narrow majority in the 151-seat parliament.
The decision to hold early elections comes after Croatian lawmakers voted to dissolve parliament, a move that aims to facilitate the election process within a two-month timeframe. This resolution was prompted by 11 opposition parties, including the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the left-wing ecological party "Mozhemo!", who had called for the parliament's dissolution following a series of protests against the policies of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ).
Despite the opposition's demands and the promise of further protests, the ruling majority in the Croatian parliament initially refused to dissolve the legislative body and call for elections at the end of February.
On February 17, thousands took to the streets of Zagreb, the nation's capital, to protest against the CDU, accusing the ruling party of corruption and advocating for the parliamentary elections to be conducted at the earliest opportunity.
