Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader and Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic on Saturday morning voted in the SDP election for the party president whose only candidate he was, and after that he told reporters that the fact that there was only one candidate for the SDP leader was also a part of democratic procedure that could be seen in other Western democracies, too.
"This is democratic procedure. In other Western democracies such thing exists. Thus, in the U.S., Great Britain and Germany it is the practice that when a party wins and achieves some goal, there is usually no more than one candidate," Milanovic told reporters after he cast his ballot in Zagreb.
The SDP presidential election began at 9 am Saturday at 529 polling stations throughout Croatia at which some 38,000 party members can vote for or against Milanovic as the SDP leader in the next four years. The voting runs until 6 pm and the results are to be announced later on Saturday evening.
The voting for other positions in the ruling party will be held at an SDP convention set for 2 June.
Milanovic recalled that at the party leadership election in 2008 after the death of the SDP president Ivica Racan there had been several candidates for the new SDP leader and that all of them had showed "a high level of responsibility and self-control".
Since then we have managed to consolidate, "to achieve good results at the local elections in 2009, launch negotiations on a broad left-of-centre coalition with all of that resulting in our success at the (parliamentary) elections when we gained the confidence of people," Milanovic said.
Asked whether he was satisfied with the relations with the SDP coalition partner -- the Croatian People's Party (HNS), the SDP head answered in the affirmative.
"We are satisfied particularly with our relations with HNS personnel in the government: Ratko Cacic, Vesna Pusic, Ivan Vrdoljak and Andrea Zlatar... I think that we are cooperating well," he said.
