1995 Croatian parliamentary election

Background

The term of the existing Chamber of Representatives was to expire one year later, in 1996. However, the Croatian government of Franjo Tuđman and his Croatian Democratic Union party hoped to exploit national euphoria over the success of Operation Storm. The Chamber of Representatives was quickly dissolved, but not before passing yet another piece of electoral legislation, introducing a new voting system which was to improve chances of the ruling party.

According to the new electoral law, 32 seats were won in individual constituencies on First past the post basis, while 80 seats were to be distributed on the basis of proportional representation, with the threshold being raised from previous 2% to 5%.

Another addition was a raised threshold for lists of party coalitions - 8% for coalition of two parties and 11% for coalition of three and more parties. It is more than obvious that the new rules were introduced to discourage coalitions of small opposition parties and subsequently have their votes dispersed and wasted below the threshold, allowing the stronger party to get additional seats.

While 12 seats were kept for Croatian expatriates, the number of seats reserved for ethnic minorities have changed. This was most evident in the case of Serbs, who had only 3 seats compared with the previous 11.

Under such conditions, opposition parties were more concerned about their own political survival than actually challenging the ruling party. Learning from their mistakes during the 1992 elections, they created ad hoc coalitions and circumvented electoral thresholds by fielding other parties' members as their own candidates on the lists.

Results

The HDZ received a similar percentage of vote and number of seats as three years earlier. More significant changes were among the ranks of the opposition; the Social Democratic Party re-emerged as a significant political factor with 9% of the vote, at the expense of the Croatian Social Liberal Party, which saw its vote share almost halved. Neither party was as successful as the large opposition coalition which included the Croatian Peasant Party, the Croatian People's Party and the Istrian Democratic Assembly.

The most tense moment of the campaign occurred during the vote count. It appeared that the Croatian Party of Rights would fail to break the 5% threshold, only for the vote to increase afterwards.

Subsequent changes

The following changes happened after elections:

• The Croatian Pure Party of Rights gained one member of parliament
• The Croatian Christian Democratic Union gained one more member of parliament
• The Serb People's Party lost one member of parliament
• The Independent Democratic Serb Party gained one member of parliament
• The Liberal Party gained four members of parliament
• The Istrian Democratic Forum gained one member of parliament
• The Croatian Independent Democrats lost one member of parliament
• Social Democratic Action of Croatia lost one member of parliament

Notes

References

References

1. [[Dieter Nohlen]] & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p410 {{ISBN. 978-3-8329-5609-7
2. Nohlen & Stöver, p415
3. (16 October 2010). "Davor Butković: Prva hrvatska Vlada koja bi mogla pasti".