Croatians go to the polls Sunday to elect a president under the cloud of a deep economic crisis, with incumbent Ivo Josipovic seen as the frontrunner as he seeks a second term in the EU’s newest member state.
Surveys ahead of the vote showed that of the four candidates vying for the largely ceremonial post, the 57-year-old centre-left leader had only one serious rival—Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic of the main opposition conservative HDZ.
With none of the candidates expected to win more than 50 percent outright, a run-off round on January 11 is likely.
The soft-spoken Josipovic—the popular third president of the former Yugoslav republic since independence in 1991–is a member of Croatia’s Social Democrats (SDP), the main partner in the ruling coalition.
A former law professor who won office on an anti-corruption ticket, Josipovic famously played Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” when Croatia joined the European Union in 2013 hoping membership would revive its flagging economy.
But the tourism-reliant economy of the small Adriatic nation of 4.2 million remains one of the EU’s weakest after six years of recession.
Unemployment is close to 20 percent, half of the country’s youth are jobless and public debt is close to 80 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).