PROFILE: Integrity only half the battle for Croatia's next premier

By Boris Babic Dec 4, 2011, 21:00 GMT

Zagreb/Belgrade - In order to trounce the ruling conservatives in parliamentary elections Sunday, Croatian opposition leader Zoran Milanovic did not have to do much more than stay honest.

It can even be said that the man who defeated him in polls four years ago, then-premier Ivo Sanader, did the job for Milanovic, by landing himself in a corruption trial.

The opposition Kukuriku (Cock-a-doodle) coalition - named for the restaurant where it was forged but also to symbolize a 'new dawn' - won 44.5 per cent of Sunday's vote, according to exit polls, twice as many as the scandal-plagued ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ).

The future prime minister is regarded as incorruptible, but, by many, as worryingly uncharismatic. The true test of his talents will begin soon: he will have to continue the cleanup of the corrupt state administration and the state business sector, while dealing with a national financial system under strain from the economic crisis.

Years of official corruption and mismanagement and Croatia's own staggering debt mean the new government has limited resources for reform, leaving it little choice but to serve up austerity with government payroll cuts.

Milanovic, 45, took over the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 2007, days before its founding father and former premier Ivica Racan died. Just months later, he and SDP narrowly lost to the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), then led by the all-powerful prime minister Ivo Sanader.

Sanader quit in 2009, halfway through his second term, in a surprise move explained only when he was then targeted by anti-corruption investigators.

Sanader's successor in HDZ and as premier, Jadranka Kosor, ended the political protection of high-ranking officials and their cronies, and took crucial steps to unblock Croatia's bid to join the EU, paving the way for its accession in July 2013.

Sanader is now on trial, as are or could soon be dozens of his cronies. Kosor, however, could not limit the damage the scandals caused, and her HDZ will now cede to Milanovic's SPD for only the second time since 1991.

Ironically, it was Sanader, then the deputy foreign minister, who induced Milanovic into Croatian politics, taking him on in the ministry in 1993.

He served as a diplomat in Nagorno-Karabakh, at the European Union and NATO, before returning and joining SDP in 1999 and rising through the party ranks until he joined the race for leadership as an outsider eight years later.

He is married, with two sons.