ZAGREB, January 23, 2019 - After negotiating his possible entry into the opposition's Civic Liberal Alliance (GLAS) party for three months, Ivo Josipović, a former Croatian president and the current leader of the non-parliamentary party "Go-Forward, Croatia – Progressive Alliance," said Wednesday that he had abandoned the project of joining GLAS and that he would again join the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Following the latest developments, GLAS leader Anka Mrak Taritaš told reporters that they should ask Josipović if he had negotiated his admission to GLAS with a hidden agenda, and added that her party would like to be "a place of gathering."
"We do not make promises, we do not blackmail or have hidden agendas, and after the negotiations Mr. Josipović said that he is after all a social democrat, and that the SDP is much closer to him, which is all right, people go where they feel better," said Mrak Taritaš. She said that her party would remain open to the SDP once the biggest opposition party stablised itself.
According to Mrak-Taritaš, in the event that Josipović is again the SDP presidential candidate, the GLAS-led Amsterdam Coalition will analyse the options to establish who of the prospective challengers stands the best chance to unseat the current president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović.
Josipović, the third Croatian president who was in office from mid-February 2010 to mid-February 2015 and a former SDP official, ran for the second term but was defeated by the incumbent president who was nominated by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). Grabar-Kitarović's first term expires in a year, however, she has not yet explicitly stated if she would run again.
Krešo Beljak of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) said that Josipović's return to the SDP was four years late. He should have returned to the SDP after he gambled away a certain election victory, said Beljak whose party is a member of the Amsterdam Coalition. Beljak said that he was sorry to see that Josipović had wasted away his political career.
Predrag Matić of the SDP said that he was glad to hear Josipovic was returning to the SDP.
Mirando Mrsić, who used to be the head of Josipović's campaign team, said that the left-of-centre option should propose a candidate that can defeat Grabar-Kitarović and that he believed that it could be Zoran Milanović, a former SDP leader.
More news on former president Josipović can be found in the Politics section.
