HDZ Pushes Far-Rightists Into Croatia Parliament

Croatia's victorious centre-right Croatian Democratic Union - whose leader has made much of his move to the centre ground - has nevertheless slipped a few combative right-wingers into the new parliament.

Although Andrej Plenkovic, the recently appointed HDZ president, has stressed his wish to move the party more towards the centre, the controversial former culture minister [who was a minister but not an MP] Zlatko Hasanbegovic, as well as the equally controversial historian, Bruna Esih, who is not actually a member of HDZ, have both entered parliament under the HDZ's auspices.

Like Hasanbegovic, Esih is a historian. She is also president of "Croatian Stages of the Cross", an NGO that organises annual commemorations of the Partisan massacre of fleeing Croatian fascists in 1945 at Bleiburg in Austria.

After President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic posthumously honoured a prominent anti-fascist fighter, Ljubomir Drndic, in late August, Esih tore into the honour on Facebook.

"Scientifically verified history and real dealing with the communist totalitarian legacy" would not give Drndic's surviving daughter "the right to contaminate the Croatian public space with this [her father's past]", she wrote.

She was also involved in drafting a law on dealing with the communist past in the last government, which the media nicknamed the "lustration law".

Another far-from-centrist HDZ member who has re-entered parliament is Stevo Culej. He notoriously said on Facebook that the ethnic Roma MP Veljko Kajtazi "lies like a Serbian Gypsy" and "lies and works on the behalf of Croat-haters", and later failed to apologize.

These candidates were not high up on the party's lists in the various constituencies but entered parliament through the system of...