Leadership Hopefuls Seek Croatian Social Democrats' Revival

Tonino Picula and Ranko Ostojic said they would stand for the leadership of Croatia's leading centre-left Social Democratic Party, SDP, after the party's current president Zoran Milanovic announced on Monday that he will not run for internal elections that will be scheduled within five months.

Both men hope to reverse the decline in the party's popularity by turning it to the left.

Picula told Croatian news portal T-portal on Tuesday that he will run for the leadership and said that SDP should represent marginalised and vulnerable people.

"They can be easily identified - they are not the proletariat, we no longer live in an industrial society; post-industrial society brought us the precariat, and we have a situation in which employees in the IT [sector] feel pressurised and constrained, as do people working in retail chain [stores]," he said.

Picula explained that if SDP did not representing these groups, then parties like centre-right Bridge of Independent Lists, MOST and the anti-establishment Living Wall would do so.

He said that Croatia should not submit to the financial and banking sectors, but invest in its education system, as "only the educated ones thrive in today's world".

Ostojic announced his candidacy on Facebook on Monday evening, saying it was important "to preserve the SDP" and show that it is and will remain "a real social democratic party".

"I declare that I will be running for SDP president. We're going to deal with our mistakes; we'll go out and fight," he concluded.

Picula is currently an MEP and was foreign minister in the SDP's coalition government between 2000 and 2003, while Ostojic was interior minister in the SDP's coalition government between 2011 and 2015.

Despite most pre-election...