A leftist opposition legal scholar will face off against Zagreb’s colorful mayor in Croatia’s presidential runoff elections, the state-run Electoral Commission said early yesterday.
The failure of the ruling conservative party candidate to make the runoff signals Croatians’ growing dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the economy and charges of high-level corruption.
With nearly all votes counted on Sunday, the commission said Social Democrat lawmaker Ivo Josipovic garnered 32.4 percent of votes and Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic — who ran as independent candidate — got 14.8 percent of votes.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Because no candidate got more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two finishers must now face each other in a Jan. 10 runoff.
Both candidates are considered pro-Western and both will likely support the ex-Yugoslav country’s efforts to win entry into the EU, possibly in 2011 or 2012.
A professor of international law at the Zagreb Law Faculty and lawmaker since 2003, Josipovic has a largely untainted resume, but even his supporters acknowledge that he suffers from a lack of charisma.
Speaking after the vote, Josipovic, 52, said Croats “had a chance today to choose between justice and injustice, between law and lawlessness, between light and darkness.”
“They obviously have chosen light and I’m sure it will be the same on Jan. 10,” Josipovic said.
Zagreb’s mayor since 2000, the 54-year-old Bandic remains popular despite allegations of political cronyism. Bandic was kicked out of the Social Democrats when he decided to oppose Josipovic in the presidential election.
Following Sunday’s vote, Bandic said the result showed that Croatia “needs a different president, who won’t be affected by any party’s policies.”
Bandic views are often hard to pin down, shifting across the political spectrum. He allowed a nationalist singer to perform at the main square, dismaying many Zagreb residents, but has also supported gay parades, unnerving conservatives.
Bandic also has a more checkered past than his staid rival. In 2002, he fled police after being caught driving drunk.
Local media claim he regularly fixes bids for city work projects, funneling to his aides and overpaying them. He denies the charges, saying there has been no formal investigation launched against him.
The country of 4.5 million joined NATO in April and hopes to enter the EU soon.
Voter’s main concerns during the campaign were the economy and allegations of widespread corruption.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS