Who is going to get whom?
Some hundred years ago, Vladimir Illyich Lenin, precisely, as well as cynically, formulated the basic problem of politics with the famous question "Who - whom?".
This question has (in various wordings) been used in the long tradition of Modernism, or at the very least, since Machiavelli and Hobbes, to describe rampant, "natural", (pre)politics; the imminent conflict occurring in a community which has not yet been institutionalised.
Contrary to this model, the institutionalisation of permanent conflicts in the community - denied only by authoritarian and particularly totalitarian interpretations of the essence of sociability - gradually led to the present form of established political pluralism in the form of a multi-party system.
The transition to an established multi-party system is one of the basic processes marking the post-communist transition, including all of the occasionally enormous difficulties accompanying it: the domination of ethno political contextualizing, the notorious absence of democratic political culture, as well as the evident incapacity of new political parties to present realistic social and world-view differences.
However, the spectacular achievements of this process do not simultaneously guarantee its irreversibility – namely, the bogey of non-party pluralism still haunts post-communism, especially Croatian post-communism.
Non-party pluralism, as is well-known, characterised the very beginnings of (British) pluralism, but was later used in an ideological way in Yugoslav self-management and was also - already in the Croatian pluralist context - used in the reform aspirations of Supek's parapolitical movement. Yet it is only the current presidential elections that show how fragile the Croatian multi-party system really is.
The conviction that all politicians are corrupt and that politics is basically an immoral activity has been massively spread in Croatia over the years, not only by the media but also by incoherent campaigns of the "civil society" which insisted that the key issue of democracy is campaign financing rather than the internal democratic quality of political parties. Thus, only seemingly paradoxically, the basic question of the moral bases of democratic political activity has been focused on bribery instead of procedure.
This has multiply empowered extensively dangerous politicians with mostly radical leanings, who actually despise democratic "detours" and ultimately want power at all costs. In terms of presidential elections, what actually benefits such politicians, despite all of the media theorizing on individual candidates' programmes, is that these elections are basically a question of choosing a person suitable for, in normal circumstances, influencing the "fine tuning" between the state bodies, decently representing the community abroad, and being capable to articulate morally relevant viewpoints concerning social problems which they in fact cannot actually resolve.
Still, anti-party promotion has resulted in a logical public atmosphere: what people ultimately desire are "non-politicians" i.e. non-party leaders. Even a superficial look at the list of candidates clearly indicates this: two thirds of the candidates are not (any longer) members nor representatives of political parties, half of the strongest parliamentary parties not only haven’t put up their own candidates, they haven’t even decided who to endorse.
However, an even more important is the fact that the current voter opinion polls show that among six of the strongest candidates, three of them are independent (formally: party renegades).
A celebration of democracy - as the pre-election campaign and the elections themselves are sometimes "inspirationally" called - is obviously happening in quite a circus-like way in Croatia. It is sadly a circus show in which the clowns mostly make us sad, jugglers keep dropping their balls and the magicians clumsily mutilate their charming assistants. When the show is over, everyone, naturally, goes home with a yet again profound lack of confidence in the meaning of democratic process, since the audience largely enjoys the very fact that the protagonists are no better than the audience.
A broad lack of confidence in the parties results not only in the relations portrayed above, but also, by a reverse sequence, in the clear erosion of the party structures. Bandić’s candidature is quite paradigmatic in itself. Regardless of its other characteristics, his candidature directly endangers two of the key Croatian parties: the HDZ and the SDP.
Namely, by withdrawing from the party, Bandić initiated the process of melting away the SDP's internal structure. This is demonstrated not only by the fact that he is (very likely) being followed by some other members of the leadership, but primarily because of (certainly not insignificant) possibility of him even winning the elections (most probably against the official representative of his former party). Should that happen, it would - after several earlier failures to do so - be proven that president of the SDP indeed strikingly resembles a talentless football centre forward, who keeps missing opportunities to score which are being created by the whole team (i.e. the party).
On the other hand, Bandić's candidature is also eroding the HDZ constituency (which has been extremely disciplined for the past two decades); it is indisputable that a considerable number of traditional HDZ voters will back him. If we take into consideration that part of the voters from the same group will support Vidošević and Primorac, the situation has an even more devastating effect for the HDZ. The likely possibility that the HDZ, which has been the strongest national party for years, will be left without a presidential candidate in the run off (rarely possible in social environments where democracy is consolidated) will, almost definitely, cause intraparty conflicts.
As it seems, both leading parties will be quite weakened after the presidential elections (unless radical shifts occur in the weeks to come). If that proves right, it will seem to many (not without reason) that "the voters are finally starting to punish partitocracy". This will, indeed, be partly true, but one should also consider the broader consequences of the possible development of such events.
The decline of the leading parties may easily be the beginning of a process which has only just begun with the current elections; it is possible that this is exactly what will lead to premature parliamentary elections. If the conflicts in the HDZ become major and the SDP candidate loses the election in the run off, it would definitely be easier for the prime minister to introduce disciplinary measures in the party by calling parliamentary elections, than to prepare a party convention.
She would then hope that the scenario which recently occurred in Germany be repeated - a radical decline of both leading parties, in the hope that she, like her German colleague, would succeed in her party losing less. In this matter she would also have to count on the mentioned decline of the SDP, which can be intensified by the intransigence of the party president and by the consequences of conflict in the strongest local party organisation caused by possible extraordinary mayoral elections in Zagreb if Bandić wins on 10th January.
In order to truly understand the present situation, caused largely by the pre-election opinion polls, we must seriously take into consideration the limitations which exist in this research (even among serious and extensive research work). Generations will pass before important elements of the local political culture change, which actually clearly relativize the meaning of pre-election polls (if they are perceived literally).
Methodological corrections taken from abroad obviously do not help here, since it would not be sufficient to increase the results by a mere 1.5% in Croatia, as in the case of U.S. Republicans. Local HDZ voters (and others, especially the village population) need a more significant correction in the presentation of results, and they all require essential change on the level of political culture (including, certainly, TV "experts" who have in the past defended the relevance of incorrect outgoing polls, which were assumed to be more reliable than pre-election polls, even when the actual results were already widely known).
However, while professional public opinion pollers at least agreed to examine the cause of system errors in their research, the suppliers of "the first realistic results, not forecasts" to the public, did not even become aware of the massive proportions of their errors in the past. Therefore we should unfortunately expect for this type of nonsense to be repeated in the future.
It is, however, still possible that the elections will not cause such a great upheaval on the political scene. It is even possible that Josipović will defeat Hebrang in the run off.
It is certainly not insignificant that the elections have been timed in order to help Hebrang (if possible), or currently even more likely, help Bandić, while on the other hand, harm the centre and left-wing candidates (the voters arriving to Croatia for the holidays from abroad will be able to vote in the 27th December elections - traditionally mainly conservative voters; on 10th January however, tens of thousands of skiers, traditionally closer to the centre and/or left, will leave the country for the holidays). However, even in such a case, big parties are seriously affected and their restructuring will take time.
If, however, the most radical outcome occurs (from the viewpoint of the present factual two-party system) the advocates of the reckoning with "partitocracy" will nevertheless have to abstain from celebration. This is so because the explosion of "independent candidates" does not really change the political reality of the country. For example, only one out of a dozen presidential candidates has no experience in politics, either as a party or government official.
Despite the appearance (and the possible strengthening) of Kerum and similar political novices, when carefully studying the seeming erosion of party structures, they are actually more similar to the process of metastasizing than actually declining; party appointees are massively spreading through society and the community, increasingly often as "independent politicians".
In fact, Croatia has found itself in a disabled social situation with only one type of elite, the political elite (there is a large share of former senior political officials among judges, researchers, managers and activists). Therefore, the elections will now - and from now on - be determined by a threefold offer of party candidates, party renegades (who are desperately striving to reconstruct their political innocence) and inexperienced political amateurs (odd lovers of the positions they are competing for, yet claiming that they despise politics, obviously forgetting that the old slogan from the film Kekec "Good will is the best", rarely truly helps).
The voters will definitely not have it easy, they are obviously not being faced with a “mere” presidential election, but when looking at our local circumstances, what they are really deciding upon is "Who is going to get whom?".
