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Date: 18 Nov 1995 23:52:13
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From: Ivo Skoric 
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What is your opinion about the War Crimes Tribunal?  Do you believe that
the guilty must

be brought to justice before any peace is possible or is it a symbolic
empty gesture of

a world community who couldn't prevent the atrocities so it will now try
to punish them?

Do you think it will be funded properly and if not what will be the
consequences? Do you

believe that the prosecution will be fair and ubiased?  In particular, I
am wondering if

the war crime of rape will be connected only to the Serb side or will it
also be attributed

to any other perpetrator (UN soldiers, Moslems or Croats)?




--Boundary-4263770-0-0--

From notes@igc5.igc.org Sun Nov 19 04:39:01 1995
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Date: 18 Nov 1995 23:51:53
Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat" 
From: Ivo Skoric 
Subject: Croatian elections viewed by a Croatian woman
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Turning Off the Dark

Despite of pale public statements of opposition leaders that they will 
win, almost everybody in Croatia expected HDZ, the ruling party, to 
win with great two third majority. HDZ nomenclatura hoped that 
their "pre-election preparation" will bring good results (for them), 
and majority of citizens expected the same outcome with fear. 
Namely, Tudjman's HDZ imposed the early elections hoping to 
capitalize politically the victory of Croatian forces against Serb 
rebels in early August. The electoral law favorized big parties (HDZ 
in the first place): the 5% limit for one proportional voting and the 
simple majority clause in the districts. The manipulation through 
media was more intensive than ever. The coverage of each move of 
the candidates who kept governmental offices exceeded by far their 
official roles. Therefore, anything below 50-60% was a failure, 
which actually happened. HDZ got 44%, which is more or less what 
they already won twice at elections in 1990 and 1992. Having in 
mind what was going on in last hours of counting of votes it is 
rather clear that they got much less than was officially declared. 
There was hardly any control against forgeries in counting of votes 
and further data processing. In other words, all marginal results are 
unreliable and it is possible that in many districts HDZ candidates 
would not have won had there been a proper independent control. 
The same applies with the result of HSP (Croatian Party of Rights, 
radical right wing, by its self-understanding the successor of the 
Ustashas-Fascists): 5% was the minimum share for a party to get 
seats in the Parliament, and HSP is an open ally of HDZ. 

Almost everybody could have known that the only chance to win 
against HDZ election machinery (which means pressure and 
manipulation) was to have a great coalition of all opposition parties. 
Some of them realized it and succeeded, like the centrist coalition of 
Croatian Peasant's Party, Istrian Democratic Assembly, Croatian 
Christian Democratic Union, and Croatian People's Party, which 
won almost 20%. Opposition winners at previous elections, Croatian 
Social Liberal Party, decided to run alone in these elections and lost 
more than half they had before (26% in 1993 and 11% 1955). They 
were playing on nationalist sentiments trying to compete with 
Tudjman's inarticulate populist movement and they lost. Obviously, 
situation in Croatian society has changed and consciousness of 
socio-economic problems in the country made citizens to vote 
differently. It was clear that, since opposition parties are not yet 
clearly profiled and therefore they are rather week and confused, 
these elections can be seen as voting against HDZ rather than voting 
for any opposition program.

Regarding women in these elections in general, nothing has 
changed. They were not visible neither in public campaign nor in 
programs of the parties (with some exceptions: four, out of sixteen 
parties which took part in elections, had something to say regarding 
women, and mostly this was not anything to be happy about). 
Previous Parliament had 5% women MPs while the newly elected 
one has 8%. This small improvement can make happy only those 
who love statistics. Otherwise, the main pattern remains the same 
and unfortunately, most of these newly elected female MPs can be 
considered honorary men.

An attempt to challenge the public sphere at least, to think about 
women, was the Ad Hoc Coalition of twelve women's groups from 
all over Croatia initiated by Women's Infoteka Zagreb and Group 
for Women Human Rights B.a.B.e. (Be Active Be Emancipated). 
The Coalition prepared the Women's Election Platform for 
monitoring and influencing the Election '95 in Croatia. Their request 
was based on fundamental human rights like: full economic, social 
and political equality for women, elimination of all forms of 
discrimination against women: by fighting discriminatory practices 
and attitudes/stereotypes in public and in family; ensuring full and 
equal participation of women in all official structures and on all 
institutional levels; implementing broadly based efforts and public 
actions to discourage private and public violence against women; 
providing high social and health standards for women in Croatia; 
introducing educational programs about equal rights between 
genders and eliminating all religious and ideological (especially 
nationalistic) indoctrination in public education; immediately 
stopping the militarization of society, the glorification of war and the 
construction of enemy ideology... However, this action, no matter 
how small this was in a context of the whole event, played certain 
role. Most of the parties (HDZ, HSP and some other small parties 
were exceptions) expressed at least good intention to deal with 
women's issues. Some of them, right wing, fascist parties were very 
much irritated. At a public hearing under the title "Women's Voices 
Must Be Heard", organized by Women's Coalition with their guests, 
women candidates from opposition parties, a group of New 
Croatian Right Wing interrupted loudly the hearing and in the mess 
they produced, one of them hit a woman in audience. Only then 
police intervened and restored order.

Looking at all this, there are some reasons for optimism in the 
society in general. The fact that Croatia did not become one-party 
state and that nationalistic, right wing ideology is not anymore that 
strong and beyond any question as it was before, is certainly an 
opportunity for development of democracy. And regarding women 
in particular, democracy is always much better pattern for struggle 
for women human rights than totalitarianism.

Djurdja Knezevic
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