Only two and a half months before the elections, Premier Ivica Račan has made a spectacular political turnabout: he has written off his deputy Goran Granić, as well as Health Minister Andro Vlahušić and Transport Minister Roland Žuvanić. In so doing, the SDP president decided at a critical moment to leave the entire membership of Libra, his most faithful and most correct coalition partners, out to dry. After several meetings in recent days, Premier Račan gave Libra president Jozo Radoš his party’s final decision: the Social Democrats will not sign a pre-election coalition agreement with that party. Račan’s justifications were that the SDP membership is against a joint ballot with Libra and that he can do nothing to change that decision, which the leading politicians of Libra do not believe. They are convinced that if he wanted to, Račan could easily break the weak opposition within his party. And, in part, they are right. Had Račan not written off Goran Granić, and if he really cared about a partnership with Libra, he would certainly have managed to convince his party leadership of the necessity of a coalition with Libra. The SDP leadership has only once discussed the possibility of a coalition with Libra, and that was when they have their agreement in principle for negotiations to begin between Račan and Radoš. At that time, the joint coalition appearance was openly disputed only by Defense Minister Željka Antunović, while in informal discussions, all of the party leaders agreed with her request. However, Libra has not accepted this explanation. “If Premier Račan has announced that there will be room on the SDP ballot for at least one-third non-party persons, then why is there no room for a few representatives of Libra?” one of the leading Libra politicians asked in his conversation with Nacional.

“SDP’s decision is final and with it Račan issued the death sentence to Libra. Without a strong coalition partner, Libra has no chance of surviving the upcoming parliamentary elections. If we lose parliamentary status, which is certain to occur, that will mean political euthanasia for this party. And the end of the serious political ambitions for Deputy Premier Goran Granić, Minister Andro Vlahušić and Ronald Žuvanić and party president Jozo Radoš.

“The blow by SDP is that much worse because the members of Libra left Dražen Budiša and HSLS and put their political careers on the line to stand behind Račan and SDP. Furthermore, in showing their disobedience for Budiša, Radoš, Granić, Vlahušić, Žuvanić, Goranko Fižulić, Mladen Godek and others managed to save the government and the Premier function for Ivica Račan. In return, Račan and his party have now turned their backs on us,” was the disappointed comment by a Libra member who concluded that their former party HSLS is rightfully laughing at them because they ended up looking naïve in the face of Račan’s political games.

However, SDP claims they had no other choice. In their assessment, Libra has not succeeded over the past two years in developing a serious party infrastructure such that the party in fact has no organizational structure for these elections. With that, public opinion polls do not give Libra more than 1.5% of the vote, which makes the party completely unattractive for a coalition. Despite this, Libra has allegedly requested a significant presence on the joint ballot, which the Social Democrats could not accept. SDP also rejects all comparisons to the January 2000 elections, when the coalition with HSLS enabled the big win by the Social Democrats. They believe that a joint ballot with Libra would not be a true substitute for that coalition and that the voters would not see this coalition in the same way that they recognized the coalition between SDP and HSLS.

The greatest surprise in the entire story is the ease with which Račan wrote off Goran Granić, his right hand man and the operative leader of the government. For over three years, Račan and Granić were the closest associated, and Račan had immense faith in Granić, handing him an entire series of the most important tasks. Granić prepared the government sessions, he was responsible for national security, relations with the ICTY, unions, religious groups, the energy sector… However, as Račan handed Granić greater authority, so did his resistance towards him rise. The coalition partners complained that Granić was uncooperative, that he took too much on, that he was out of control and forcing his opinions on others. Recently, Science Minister Gvozdan Flego completely lost his temper at a government session and stated that it was psychologically unbearable to work with Granić. Some say, that he expressed that which the majority of Račan’s cabinet was thinking. However, the Premier calmed him down and convinced them to accept the legal solution by which Goran Granić could again be a candidate for director of the scientific institute Hrvoje Požar. That was the first sign that Račan was trying to secure Granić an honorable out of the government and politics.

In the meantime, Granić gave his opponents sufficient material to use against him. SDP claims that he made a series of political and diplomatic errors which brought him serious political harm. They say that he accused certain foreign diplomats in Zagreb without cause that they were working against the interests of Croatia, he needlessly entered into a conflict with ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, he unfoundedly stated that General Ante Gotovina was hiding out in Austria and he should not have accused the international community of BiH of working against Croatia’s best interests. Furthermore, SDP claims that Goran Granić is responsible for the failure of several reforms for which he was responsible, such as reforms to the state administration, and signing collective agreements with the unions. For all these reasons, sources close to the Premier claim that Račan took advantage of the pre-election state to elegantly get rid of Granić on time.

After the breakdown of talks, the disappointed Libra president Jozo Radoš announced changes in the party’s relations towards SDP and the government. And, in fact, already on 6 September at the Libra leadership meeting, he announced that his party would not support the rebalance of the state budget. Radoš stated that it was absolutely unacceptable for two ministries, defense and internal affairs, both led by SDPers, to overstep salary expenditures by 600 million kuna. Radoš claims that in doing so, they brought the entire policy of rationalization of costs of the state administration into question, something he insisted upon while he was Defense Minister.

Libra’s call for disobedience of SDP, however, will not cause any great problems in the functioning of Račan’s government, though the bitter taste of betrayal will not be forgotten by the Libra members for a long time. Radoš’s liberals have no other coalition partner other than SDP. HSS, HDZ and the other right and centre parties are not an option for program and political reasons. Vesna Pusić announced long ago that HNS would appear independently in the elections, while Libra claims that they can not seriously talk to LS about cooperation. Not only because LS president Ivo Banac once announced that in a possible election coalition between LS and Libra, he would be the leader of all the ballot lists, but also because LS has been shaken with serious internal conflicts in the past few months.

Therefore, neither party egoism nor political greed, as in the case of certain other coalitions, made this election cooperation between SDP and Libra impossible. What was key was Ivica Račan’s assessment that Granić and Libra were spent, and that they could only hinder SDP in talks with future coalition partners.