Zagreb Crisis - Background

Background

The crisis had its origin in the factional struggle within the ruling party of Croatia at the time, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). In 1993 the former Prime Minister Josip Manolić, head of security services and leader of HDZ party moderates has gradually fell out of favour with President Franjo Tuđman, whose became increasingly aligned with extreme nationalists led by Defence Minister Gojko Šušak. In the spring of 1994, when it became apparent that Manolić would lose his post of Speaker of the Chamber of Counties (the short-lived upper house body in the Croatian Parliament), him and Stjepan Mesić, who was at the time Speaker of Parliament, organized a mass defection of HDZ members of parliament who formed a new party called Croatian Independent Democrats (HND), hoping to strip Tuđman of majority in the parliament. The attempt ultimately failed and Tuđman's party eventually managed to maintain power on the national level. However, in a number of local and regional assemblies the defection of HDZ members allowed opposition parties to gain majorities.

One of these was the Zagreb County Assembly. For Tuđman this apparently represented an embarrassing setback that he had to revert in any way possible. He initiated legislation aimed at merging the two county-level administrative units (the Zagreb County and City of Zagreb) which would then require a new election for the enlarged assembly. The idea was to drown the opposition-controlled Zagreb County assembly with votes from the City of Zagreb constituency, which was at the time widely perceived as a solid HDZ stronghold.