Yesterday's news shocked and awed Croatian public, turning almost anyone into political analyst. The question almost everyone asks is simple "Why?"
Nobody in this part of the world voluntarily relinquishes power. Especially not after winning two parliamentary elections, and having opposition in disarray. Sanader on yesterday's press conference categorigally denied that his health anything to do with it. He gave some cryptic hints about "finishing his stretch of the road" and "new beginning" in his life.
That left evryone - his supporters and opponents alike - to scratch heads. There are various speculative explanations and they could be broadly divided into two groups.
The first group claims that Sanader didn't actually resign or - to be more precise - he doesn't want to leave reins of power. His plan is to make his presidential run as dramatic and formidable as possible and, hopefully, win some centrist and leftist voters. Therefore, he would abandon and distance himself from the party - which is now being visibly dominated by hard right cadre, former suppoters of his party rival Ivić Pašalić - as well from the government, which is going to be hated due to incoming budgetary, economic and social collapse. In Autumn Sanader is about to run as Knight In Shining Armour, rescuing Croatia both from ruin and from right-wing extremists running HDZ.
Second group claims that Sanader is actually sincere about leaving politics, at least for a year or two. Those who believe that his resignation is genuine are divided into two subgroups - those who believe that his resignation was indeed voluntary and those who believe that it was forced.
If Sanader wanted to resign, this seems like a good moment. He brought his party from the brink of disappearance in 2000, returned it to power, won two parliamentary and three sets of local elections. He defeated his party and all other political rivals. He was the most powerful, most charismatic of all Croatian politicians. If a Croatian fitted description of being "on top" it was Sanader. So, what was the better moment to quit? Especially with truly bad times unpleasantly looming. This way, Sanader will be remembered by Croatians as a man under whom they lived well, at least in comparatively.
However, there are also some signals that Sanader in last few years actually began to lose tight reins of the party by yielding increasing amount of clout to right-wingers. In order to win elections, he had to mobilise its Tudjmanist hard-core nationalist supporters and shift his rhetoric rightwards, far from centre and Europe. By acting right, he legitimised return of Tudjmanism in his own party and thus strenghtened it, which all recently - according to some media speculations - exploded in open revolt between Sanader and right-wingers' leader Andrija Hebrang. At the same time, Sanader's only weapon for pacifying right-wing was his "good European" credentials or prospect of Croatia joining EU soon under his leadership; when this prospect disappeared, so did the reason for right-wingers to tolerate Sanader. Many speculate that Hebrang and right-wingers actually blackmailed Sanader into resignation, using the evidence of various corruption scandals accumulated during last six years.
In any case, whatever Sanader's intentions were, his resignation wasn't greeted with much sympathy among Croatian public. Most of the comments in media, as well from ordinary people, are full with words and phrases like "irresponsible", "coward", "rats leaving sinking ship".
If Sanader indeed plays this like a piece of theatre, he might find that the voters he want to woo are attracted more to the vision of Sanader the Great Leader than to vision of Sanader the Drama Queen.
BTW, another English language post that tries to summarise and offer some explanation of yesterday's event can be found here.
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