Jadranka Kosor has staged a coup in the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and should resign, candidate for HDZ president Milan Kujundzic said on Friday in a comment on the announcement by the the incumbent president that she would formally propose that at the annual convention scheduled for May 20 a new party leadership be elected and that the statute be amended to postpone the election of HDZ president until July 1 and that the election be held on a one-member-one-vote basis.
"I believe, and that must happen, that Mrs Kosor, who has turned the party into her own empire, will resign today. Anything else would be unacceptable," Kujundzic said at a press conference.
He said the one-member-one-vote model was acceptable to him, provided that the election process was conducted in accordance with democratic standards.
"A person who was given both the party and the state as a gift by acclamation regards that as a toy. Mrs Kosor got carried away playing with the party and the state. She has lost the state in a way, and now she is preparing a scenario of how to lose the HDZ," Kujundzic said.
"If Kosor had democratised the HDZ two years ago when she took the helm, the HDZ would not have suffered the present disaster," Kujundzic said, stressing the importance of democratisation of Croatia's strongest opposition party. "Kosor and her minions and bosses must step down because they can't seek different rules of the game now that they are losing."
Kujundzic said that at the May 20 convention he would advocate that neither a president nor other bodies be chosen and that only the statute be amended, while a president and other bodies should be elected at a later date.
"The HDZ now does not exist as a party, but only as an interest group of wretched people who are trying to preserve their positions and financial interests," the HDZ presidential nominee said.
