Local elections (2)

Croats cast their vote in local elections yesterday. A summary of the results, ordered by the size of towns.
In Zagreb incumbent mayor and swanky social democrat Milan Bandić goes to the next round, in which he will have to fight independent candidate Josip Kregar, dean of Zagreb's Law faculty. Bandić received 48 percent of the votes, a bit short for a win in the first round.
Entrepeneur Željko Kerum got 40 percent of the votes in Split. His main contender Ranko Ostojić (social democrat) follows with 35 percent. Both men (Croatian politics is to a large degree, unfortunately, men's business) will have a face-off in the second round.
No second round in Rijeka, Croatia's largest port. Social democrat Vojko Obersnel won a safe majority of the votes.
Osijek will have a second round in two weeks. The contenders are incumbent right-wing mayor Anto Đapić and Krešimir Bubalo, member of Branimir Glavaš HDSSB party. Glavaš was sentenced to ten years last week after he was found guilty of war crimes against Serbian civilians in Osijek.
All other towns have much less than 100.000 inhabitants. Only in these smaller towns some HDZ mayors managed to secure their seats (HDZ is the ruling party in national politics). HDZ president Jadranka Kosor said that her party won the vast majority of the counties, for what it's worth. Croatia has 21 counties (županije), an administrative unit that does not hold a lot of power.
High-ranking HDZ-member Andrija Hebrang, former minister of Defense and Health, was not surprised that his party did not win in the bigger towns. "In the centre of the city live either the voters or descendants of people who were privileged during communism." The electorate Hebrang likes better gathered last week in Bleiburg for a commemoration. In 1945 Tito's partisans killed there a great number of fascists, ustaše, četniks and also some innocent people. Hebrang gave a speech in Bleiburg, a bunch of clergymen said that if "Bleiburg is no genocide, then what is genocide?", and several people were arrested for wearing fascist symbols.

Swine flu

A 22 year old girl who returned from Chicago to Osijek, in the far East of Croatia, was suspected of having swine flu. In a special press conference, Health minister Darko Milinović told the girl was being kept in isolation and monitored. Večernji list put a picture of the girl online, with a bar over her eyes as if she is some kind of criminal.
A day later we know that the girl is not infected with swine flu. Actually, she doesn't even have "normal" flu. She recovered from swine flu in a day, but I wonder how much time she needs to recover from the stigma.
Croats are generally quickly worried about their health, except when it come to food (too much meat, salt and fat, too little vegetables). We are being told not too panic, but at the same time the head of the Epidemiology Office says that we should "immediately contact a doctor" if we have symptoms of influenza such as "pain, headache and exhaustion" and the body temperature is above 38 degrees. During the weekend we should go to the hospital.
And everybody is wondering why Croats are massively on sick leave. In Gospić, a small town in the Lika region, the average every worker is on sick leave for two weeks per year. Daily almost 60.000 people don't show up at work. That's a huge number on a total of 1,5 million employed people.
It's quite easy to spot a swines in Croatia. I saw this one in Lonsko Polje, a nature reservation area south of the highway to Belgrade.

Local elections

On 17 May Croats will go to the polls in local elections. To inform myself, I checked the main newspaper websites and TV stations. Surprisingly, it is Nova TV's website (a commercial station) that offers the most extensive information on the local elections. Their news program, Dnevnik, is usually rather sensational and focuses almost exclusively on Croatian affairs, in which respect it resembles Croatian newspapers. None of the newspapers nor state run public television HRT has a site about the elections.
In Osijek, Croatia's fourth largest city, the main candidates competing for the position of mayor belong to the right or extreme right. Krešimir Bubalo is leading the polls. Bubalo is a member of the HDSSB party, led by Branimir Glavaš who is charged with war crimes. His main opponent is Anto Đapić, who belongs to the HSP, a party known for its strong anti-Serb attitude.
Another interesting city to watch is Split, Croatia's second by size. In Split entrepreneur and independent candidate Željko Kerum is leading the polls. In national elections Split was firmly controlled by the governing HDZ party of prime minister Sanader, himself a son of Split and great fan of football club Hajduk. Kerum's political independence is part of a wider trend in Croatia towards non-aligned candidates for political posts.
Then, of course, there are the usual outsiders and irregularities. In Kaštela, a small town not far from Split, former porn star Lidija Šunjerga runs for the office of mayor. Her campaign is centered around gender equality and environmental protection. More worrying are reports about manipulation of the number of registered voters. Dusina, a tiny village in the Dalmatian hinterland, counts a total of 530 voters of which 404 are registered at the same address. You would need a skyscraper of 35 stories to accommodate so many voters at one and the same address, the paper Novi list calculated. In Zadar, 19 voters are registered at the address of a two-story house.
The political blog Pollitika launched a site where you can check how many voters are registered at a certain address. By looking up addresses and seeing the number of registered voters, Pollitika wants to map (literary) irregularities. This evening a television program on Nova TV will be dedicated to electoral manipulation, so Pollitika's map should get more details.