Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor supported Andrija Hebrang, while Ivo Sanader backed his opponents"The only reason Andrija Hebrang is not now in the run-off round of the elections is the fact that the Dragan Primorac and Nadan Vidosevic campaigns have taken a part of our voters. They did so in spite of the fact that it was clear to all that they have no chance of winning, at the behest and with the financial backing of those who wanted the HDZ to fail. The worst of it is that some former and some current members of the party took part, so that the first task of the HDZ should be to get rid of these people, even if that includes the former party leader," Nacional was told by a high-ranking member of the HDZ as soon as it became clear that the party's candidate Andrija Hebrang did not win enough votes to make it into the run-off round of the presidential elections.

There has been a great deal of talk these past days among prominent members of the HDZ of this theory of an organised operation directed against the HDZ candidate, and this speculation reached its peak on election night, when several members of the party's presidency, speaking privately, linked these manipulations to the former Prime Minister and party leader Ivo Sanader. This is especially the thinking of close aides to the current party president and Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, who suspect that it was Sanader's informal support that was key to the decisions of Primorac, Vidosevic and Milan Bandic to run for office.

Significant in this context is Kosor's statement immediately after the official results were announced in which she blamed party dissidents for Hebrang's failure and said that the party would have much to do in the future in this regard.

Andrija Hebrang was even more direct, accusing Primorac of entering the presidential race with the aim of reducing his chances. "What happened at these elections I am told by my colleagues in other European countries is unthinkable for them, and that is that three former ministers from the same party should run in the presidential elections. This definitely splintered the voters of the political right, and I do not believe that this was a coincidence and that it was in fact an organised operation. Allow me to express my doubts as to whether Dragan Primorac truly believed he could win the elections, or did in fact enter the elections with ulterior motives in mind."

It can be concluded, on the basis of these statements, that the public could in the near future be presented with a great deal of new information concerning the intrigues and events that took place behind the scenes during the election campaign, and the consequences of these revelations could have a significant influence on the future balance of power on the Croatian political scene. Regarding the HDZ the speculation concerning the activities of Ivo Sanader could prove crucial. The former Prime Minister and party leader took almost no part in Hebrang's campaign, and the feeling now among members of the party is that this was no coincidence and that Sanader communicated with opposing candidates and at times gave them his personal support.

Nacional's source is convinced that Sanader's activities were directed against Hebrang. "Neither Vidosevic nor Primorac considered running in the elections while Sanader was at the helm of the party, because he forbade it. Some say that he gave them his tacit support. But, there are indications that he did much more, including in the case of Bandic, with whom he had always been on good terms. On the other hand, when you see who was involved in their campaigns financially and providing logistic support, the link to Sanader is more than obvious. I believe Hebrang himself is aware of this, but it is an open question as to whether he will speak publicly about it."

Based on what could be learned from conversations off the record with members of the HDZ gathered at the party headquarters on election day, the decision of some business people close to the HDZ to financially support competing candidates has been deemed by the party leadership as an act of betrayal.

This pertains above all to Jako Andabak, who was for years considered a person close to Ivo Sanader, and to long-time HDZ member and Rijeka-based businessman Robert Jezic. Andabak has personally stated that he donated 2 million kuna to Primorac, while Jezic gave 200 thousand apiece to Primorac and the SDP's Josipovic. It is no wonder then that Hebrang, waiting for the elections results to come, sarcastically asked a Novi list daily reporter for whom his boss had cast his vote, alluding to Jezic. Given that Andabak was in the past considered a person close to Sanader, it is logical that some members now feel that the party's honorary president in fact campaigned against Hebrang.

Nevertheless, regardless of Sanader's possible influence, it remains a fact that Hebrang for the first month and a half of the campaign, until Jadranka Kosor appealed to the party membership to mobilise in favour of his campaign, did not enjoy the expected logistical support of the HDZ. What is more, during that time there were a number of events that were quite the opposite of support, such as a meeting between Vladimir Seks and Nadan Vidosevic after a José Carreras concert in Zadar. Seks then allegedly offered Vidosevic that he be the official HDZ candidate, and when the news of the meeting was revealed by the press, they both denied the meeting took place.

JAKO ANDABAK, who was for years considered a man close to Ivo Sanader, gave financial support to the Dragan Primorac campaignThe second major failure caused by poor logistics, which in fact cost Hebrang the elections, was suffered by the HDZ among the Diaspora voters. This time Milan Bandic won almost half of these voters, otherwise traditionally loyal to the HDZ. It is not a well-known fact that this is the result of many years of work on the part of war vets Bandic found jobs for in city hall and the municipal Holding company.
Prominent among them is Miodrag Demo, a former commander in the 1st Croatian Guards Corps, Miro Laco, who is best man to Mirko Norac and a member of the Zagreb municipal government responsible for social welfare and veteran's affairs, while the third among them is Mirko Ljubicic Sveps, a former Security Information Service (SIS) official, now the deputy director of the waterworks and waste utilities. All three have firm ties to many veterans' associations, and Demo, who took part in almost all key wartime operations and is a disabled Homeland War vet, is respected among his fellow veterans.

Two months ago this trio organised a meeting between Milan Bandic and the former commanders of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO). 47 wartime commanders and prominent HVO officials gathered for a secret meeting held at the Kivi restaurant near Grude in western Herzegovina, who undertook to carry the Bandic campaign to majority Croat regions in Bosnia & Herzegovina. It was on that day - as was seen in the election returns - that Bandic gained his advantage over Andrija Hebrang, the candidate put forward by the HDZ, a party supported by the vast majority of Croatians in the neighbouring country.
Demo and Laco coordinated the campaign, while Mirko Ljubicic spent the last month doing much of the footwork. And so that it not turn out that he was working in the campaign during his regular job working hours, he has used his holiday time and spent the last month campaigning for Bandic in Bosnia & Herzegovina. All three war vets are convinced that their candidate will win over 95 percent of the vote in the Diaspora in the run-off round.

It was not easy, in these circumstances, for Hebrang to run his campaign, but in spite of the fact that the HDZ is portraying the failure of their candidate as a plot by the other candidates, the fact is that there was also fierce competition among them for the support of voters, much sharper barbs in fact than those directed against Hebrang himself.

And so, almost at the end of the election campaign, a rumour began circulating among politicians that seriously compromised one of the candidates favoured to make the run-off round. The story of his alleged private affair came to the attention of some reporters, but no one was willing to print it. Nevertheless, the rumour caused a great deal of commotion, and some election campaigns wondered how they might use the information. One of the candidates even contacted with one of the alleged first hand witnesses of the affair to verify its authenticity, and in the various election campaigns it was said that the incriminating information and the documents that back them up were on sale for 250 to 300 thousand euro.
The story never ran, however, and with time the entire affair died down, allegedly because the chief protagonist of the story threatened to respond in like with private matters concerning the other candidates. Only Ivo Josipovic was not involved in conflicts with his opponents throughout almost the entire campaign, given that he was very early on declared the favourite for a victory in the first round, although his campaign was from the start marked by conflict with his party colleagues.

Even though, namely, Zoran Milanovic proposed Ivo Josipovic as the SDP candidate, and later lobbied vigorously within the party in his favour, there was a major falling out between the two half way through the summer. After winning the party primaries Josipovic decided to distance himself from the SDP and set up an independent team. The dispute broke out when he tried to take on the services of the powerful Digitel marketing firm instead of Ivan Racan's PR agency. Josipovic was of the opinion that Racan's agency was not capable of covering the entire campaign and tried to engage the services of Digitel, but Milanovic would have none of it.

Ivo Josipovic distanced himself from SDP leader Zoran Milanovic during the presidential campaign by refusing the services of Ivan Racan's PR agencyThe reason was that Digitel had on several occasions taken part in HDZ campaigns and Zoran Milanovic felt that they were neither suitable nor trustworthy to lead the campaign for the SDP presidential candidate. Since the SDP financed the bulk of Josipovic's campaign, they decided to ignore the position of their candidate and rejected Digitel. And while they publicly claimed that there were no misunderstandings between them, Josipovic and Milanovic found themselves on opposite sides over the Digitel issue.It all came to a head in the second half of July, when an affronted Ivo Josipovic - who was in Dalmatia at the time - for an entire week refused to answer Zoran Milanovic's phone calls. In the end Ivan Racan got the worst of it, who had together with Milanovic come up with "Project Josipovic" and become its fiery advocate. Racan expected to lead the campaign, and was then to have been the chief advisor, and when he grasped that Josipovic had surrounded himself with other aides, he discreetly withdrew from the presidential race. With his departure Racan in effect prevented the further escalation of the conflict in the SDP, and Josipovic managed to stop the downward trend in his popularity and stabilise his position in the role of the favoured candidate in these elections.

On the other hand, in the HDZ they failed to achieve this and it appears that various backroom games within the party have significantly hurt Andrija Hebrang's presidential ambitions. If it is established that Ivo Sanader and his supporters in the party leadership had a hand in this all, it is to be expected that these conflicts will lead to significant changes in the relationships within the HDZ itself, especially in the context of the internal party elections that are, allegedly, already in the works.