Croatia’s President Milanović wins re-election with nearly 74% of the vote

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 Croatia’s incumbent President Zoran MIlanović, a critic of the European Union and NATO, has overwhelmingly won another five-year term on Sunday, defeating a candidate from the ruling conservative HDZ party in a runoff vote, near-complete official results showed.

Milanović won 74.6% of the vote while his challenger Dragan Primorac gained around 25.3%, according to the results released by Croatia’s state election authorities after more than 99% of the ballots were counted.

Milanović, 58, is an outspoken critic of Western military support for Ukraine. He is the most popular politician in Croatia, and is sometimes compared to US President-elect Donald Trump for his combative style of communication with political opponents.

On Sunday, he again criticised Brussels as “in many ways non-democratic” and run by unelected officials. The EU’s position that “if you don’t think the same as I do, then you’re the enemy” amounts to “mental violence,” Milanović said.

“That’s not the modern Europe I want to live and work in,” he said. “I will work on changing it, as much as I can as the president of a small nation.”

His triumph also sets the stage for a continued confrontation with Croatia’s powerful Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. Sparring between the two during Milanović’s first term in office has marked Croatia’s politics.

Milanović became the third Croatian president in history to win re-election; before him, only HDZ’s Franjo Tuđman and SDP’s Stjepan Mesić did so.

In Croatia, the presidency is largely ceremonial, but an elected president holds political authority and is the supreme military commander.

However, the Croatian president does not represent the Adriatic country in Brussels; the prime minister holds the seat on the Council.

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