The branch of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Pula has decided to nominate its own candidate for the mayor of that biggest Istrian coastal city at local elections this spring.
The commissioner of the SDP Pula branch, Danijel Feric, reported on Tuesday that the SDP's mayoral candidate will be SDP parliamentarian Pedja Grbin.
According to Feric, after years of participating in elections in coalitions and supporting candidates proposed by others, this time the SDP has decided to run independently.
Feric went on to say that the latest decision effectively rescinded the coalition agreement between the local SDP and the Istrian Democratic Party (IDS).
In late October, the IDS leader in Pula, Valter Boljuncic, and the then head of the SDP branch in the city, Denis Martincic, signed a cooperation agreement which provided for an IDS-SDP coalition in local elections, set for May 2013. After that Martincic was dismissed by the party leadership as the head of the SDP branch in Pula, which prompted him to state that he was surprised by the SDP presidency's decision to dissolve the Pula branch.
"It is a precedent in the region, and I am particularly surprised by the explanation of the decision that the reasons for the dissolution was our political passivity," Martincic said in Pula in early November. "The SDP branch in Pula is in power in Pula together with the IDS for the second term. The SDP has a deputy mayor, the city council chairman, five councillors .... If this qualifies as a term of political passivity, then few SDP branches throughout Croatia would be left operating," Martincic said. He said then that the latest decision by the SDP leadership in Zagreb would only harm the SDP.
The changes in the SDP Pula branch seemed to have angered Istria County Prefect and IDS president Ivan Jakovcic who said that the decision by the SDP presidency to dissolve the SDP branch in the City of Pula and Istria County was not just an internal matter of the SDP in light of the fact that "the dismissed (SDP) officials hold senior positions in Istria County and the city" but that it was also becoming a "top political issue involving attempts to politically destabilise Istria".
Since then tensions have escalated between the SDP and the IDS in Istria.
