Even though there was only one candidate, about 45 percent of party members cast their ballots.
On Sunday, Tomislav Karamarko was re-elected as HDZ president. He was the only candidate at the elections which were for the first time conducted according to the "one member – one vote" principle, reports Večernji List on April 18, 2016.
Damir Sesvečan, president of Central Election Commission, announced late on Sunday evening that about 45 percent of HDZ members cast their ballots and that Tomislav Karamarko won about 99 percent of the votes cast. The rest were spoiled ballots. It is expected that, after all the ballots are counted, Karamarko will have more than 90,000 votes.
After the results were announced, Karamarko gave a short speech and thanked everybody who came to the polls and voted for him. "I must admit that I am very satisfied with the number of people who came to vote, this is a huge number. I expected maybe 35,000 or 40,000 people would be good considering I was the only candidate. The weather today was beautiful and people had to find the will to come to polling places", said Karamarko.
"It was not easy for us, we took over a party that was on its knees. We fought to bring back pride and dignity to HDZ and to bring the party back to its original principles. It was hard, but we have returned the patriotic character to the party. We have worked and prepared the economic programme and projects. About 15,000 young men and women lost their lives for Croatia, about 3,000 veterans committed suicide after the war, and because of all of them we had to return HDZ to where it belongs, and that is the position of the strongest party in Croatian history", said Karamarko.
He pointed out that HDZ's goal was to pull the country out of economic crisis. "What concerns us are all these numbers, young people who have emigrated, 93,000 people left the country, there is a collapse of Slavonian villages, we import 70 percent of food, entrepreneurship is stifled. The previous government did not implement any major investments, over 100,000 jobs have been lost. During the next term, we will articulate our fierce patriotism, we will fight for every job, every investment, every fallow field, every man, and woman who wants to leave this country... We have paid a high price for Croatia and we will not allow it to be dismantled and forgotten and to disappear. All ideological debates will be put into the background, we do not want to deal with it", said Karamarko.
