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(E) Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 Year in Review - CROATIA
By Nenad N. Bach | Published  05/2/2003 | Data | Unrated
(E) Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 Year in Review - CROATIA


Encyclopedia Britannica 2002 Year in Review
CROATIA

by Max Primorac

Area: 56,542 sq km (21,831 sq mi)
Population (2002 est.): 4,405,000
Capital: Zagreb
Chief of state: President Stipe Mesic
Head of government: Prime Minister Ivica Racan

In 2002 Croatia continued to see its political landscape fragment and the broad-based ruling coalition split further amid slow economic recovery. On July 5 the five-party coalition government of Prime Minister Ivica Racan re-signed, only to reconstitute itself absent the second largest party in the coalition, the Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS), following the latter’s refusal to support ratification of a Croatia-Slovenia agreement concerning joint custodianship of the Krsko nuclear power plant. The break between Racan’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the HSLS, led by Deputy Prime Minister Drazen Budisa, reflected long-brewing ideological differences over basic policy decisions made by the SDP-led government. Disaffected deputies from the HSLS, led by Defense Minister Jozo Rados, who had been soundly defeated by Budisa for party president on February 2, rebelled in support of the SDP and founded a new party, Libra. 

The flap over Krsko, however, was just one of many disputes between the two neighbours. In August and September a squabble over territorial boundaries in the Bay of Piran that pitted Slovenian against Croatian fishermen turned into a full-fledged diplomatic crisis. These and other serious border disputes with Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia highlighted the country’s inability to extricate itself from unresolved post-secessionist problems stemming from the breakup of Yugoslavia more than a decade earlier. Though Croatia was admitted into NATO’s Membership Action Plan and initialed its formal application for full membership on May 14, it was apparent by year’s end that the government would fail to deliver on its major electoral promise of securing Croatia’s early admission into NATO and the European Union—essential steps in the country's integration into Western Europe. The end of the United Nations’ monitoring mission in the strategic Prevlaka Peninsula on December 15 restored Croatia’s sovereignty over its full territory, however. 

With hopes for early integration dashed, public confidence in the government's ability to resolve the many pressing economic problems—especially an unemployment rate of 22% and the need to face further painful cuts in social welfare spending—also lessened. Revenues expected from the privatization of major energy state enterprises did not materialize, and the foreign investment needed to boost job creation remained weak. The important tourist trade proved resilient, however, increasing 4% and helping the government to register a modest 4% growth in gross domestic product. 

The truncated SDP-led coalition still enjoyed a comfortable parliamentary majority after the split with the HSLS. Growing public dissatisfaction with its performance at home and abroad, however, coupled with the reemergence of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), the party that previously had governed the country, as a viable centre-right alternative to the centre-left coalition, raised speculation about early elections. Moderate nationalist Ivo Sanader, a former deputy foreign minister, was elected president of the HDZ on April 22, and the expulsion of the HDZ’s hard-line wing a few months later gave new shape and vitality to the Croatian political scene. The prospect of an HDZ-led centre-right coalition with participation by the HSLS and other like-minded smaller parties invigorated the country's political scene. 

Croatian politicians were of a single mind on one issue, however. On September 27 Parliament unanimously backed the government's legal challenge to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which had indicted retired general Janko Bobetko, a wartime commander and Croatian hero, as a war criminal. This rare broad-based political consensus reflected frustration with recent indictments by the tribunal in The Hague that seemed implicitly to revise and even criminalize Croatia’s homeland war for independence. 

Croatia’s skiing sensation Janica Kostelic became a national icon in February after winning a record four medals at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. (See BIOGRAPHIES.) On March 11 Franjo Cardinal Kuharic, one of Croatia’s most influential post-World War II religious leaders, died. (See OBITUARIES.) Kuharic was a symbol of the nation's resistance to communism and an advocate of ethnic and political tolerance. 

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