Croatia’s opposition-backed president, a critic of the European Union and NATO, has overwhelmingly won another five-year term on Sunday, defeating a candidate from the ruling conservative party in a runoff vote, near-complete official results showed.
Milanović won nearly 74% of the vote while his challenger Dragan Primorac gained around 26%, according to the results released by Croatia’s state election authorities after more than 70% of the ballots were counted.
Milanović, 58, is an outspoken critic of Western military support for Ukraine. He is the most popular politician in Croatia, and is sometimes compared to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for his combative style of communication with political opponents.
On Sunday, he again criticized Brussels as “in many ways non-democratic” and run by unelected officials. The EU position that “if you don’t think the same as I do, then you’re the enemy” amounts to “mental violence,” Milanović said.
“That’s not the modern Europe I want to live and work in,” he said. “I will work on changing it, as much as I can as the president of a small nation.”
Public opinion polls ahead of the second round had predicted Milanović’s victory, but just like in the first round, they did not correctly estimate how convincing that victory would be: Milanović won 16% more, and Primorac 6% less votes.
His triumph also sets the stage for a continued confrontation with Croatia’s powerful Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. Sparring between the two during Milanović’s first term in office has marked Croatia’s politics.
Zoran Milanović becomes the third Croatian president in history who managed to win re-election, before him only Franjo Tuđman and Stjepan Mesić managed to do so.
The presidency is largely ceremonial in Croatia, but an elected president holds political authority and is the supreme military commander.
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