ZAGREB, February 10, 2019 - The leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), Krešo Beljak, said on Saturday he was certain that the HSS could make a positive surprise at the forthcoming European elections, and that the Amsterdam Coalition could become the strongest political group in Croatia.
"All together, as a party, we must work even better at all levels and we will prove that we will and can do this at the elections scheduled for May," Beljak told a party conference in Jastrebarsko, just southwest of Zagreb.
He said that the HSS would have three candidates on the list of 12 candidates to be fielded by the Amsterdam Coalition: Beljak himself, "as a leader who doesn't shrink from responsibility", independent candidate Zoran Bahtijarević and long-standing party member and economic expert Damir Novotny.
"I am certain that the HSS as a party, all of us here, and all our members throughout Croatia, can make a positive surprise and, with preferential votes for one of the three of the HSS candidates, gather enough votes to claim a victory at the elections for the European Parliament in 2019, and that our coalition, our alliance led by the HSS, can become the strongest political group in Croatia," Beljak said.
He recalled that the negotiations launched last autumn to gather together parties that could run together in the European Parliament elections had been productive and that as a result the HSS was now the leader of the Amsterdam Coalition. "It is an honour to us all that all these parties and all their prominent politicians have recognised and accepted the HSS as the leader of the whole coalition. That gives us additional strength and motivation to justify the confidence our coalition partners have placed in us."
Presenting a report on his work in the last seven months since the previous such conference, Beljak said that the HSS's approval ratings were far below what he would have wanted, but added that the ratings were increasing steadily. "We can only imagine what our ratings would be had all our former members, who did all they could to harm their party, focused their energies on strengthening the party," he said.
Delegates adopted Beljak's report and the new party statute. The report was adopted with five votes against and the statute with four votes against and one abstention. The conference was attended by 623 of 727 delegates, the party's secretariat told Hina.
More news on the European elections can be found in the Politics section.
