Croatian Democratic Union

Croatian citizens on Sunday vote in the second round of the presidential election, which pits the incumbent conservative, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, against the Social Democratic former prime minister Zoran Milanovic.

The Croatian presidential election race, which ends on Sunday, has been hit by controversy after a far-right singer, a far-right politician and a woman who helped hijack an American passenger plane all backed the incumbent conservative, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, against her rival, Social Democratic former prime minister Zoran Milanovic.

Croatian political experts said the results of Sunday's first round of presidential elections in were predictable and in line with surveys conducted before the election.

"What happened was what we expected and what I predicted," political analyst Zarko Puhovski told BIRN on Monday.

Croatia's next president will be elected in a second round of voting on Jan. 5, according to the unofficial results of the State Election Commission (DIP) on Dec. 23.

No candidate passed the 50 percent threshold after nearly all of the votes were counted in the election, in which 11 candidates competed.

Hate crimes and hate speech towards Croatia's Serb minority have blighted the year in the country, and although there are no statistics available on the number of incidents, several very serious ones have been reported during 2019.

Preliminary results of Croatia's presidential election on Sunday, after nearly 100 per cent of votes were counted, put Social Democratic candidate and former prime minister Zoran Milanovic in the lead with 29.55 per cent of votes cast.

Croatian citizens on Sunday vote in a presidential election whose outcome is hard to predict, given the strong polling of the top three candidates.

Zoran Tegeltija, the recently appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers - Bosnia's state-level government - on Tuesday finally completed the composition of his cabinet, 14 months after the last legislative elections in the country.

The three leading candidates in Croatia's late-December presidential election have not yet confronted each other directly, for example in TV debates - but are meanwhile quarreling bitterly through the media and social networks on who is the rightful heir to former president Franjo Tudjman - who died 20 years ago on Tuesday.

Croatia's ruling party will host Europe's largest political bloc, the centre-right European People's Party, EPP, on Wednesday and Thursday in Zagreb, a major publicity event for Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic but one that has already caused some controversy.