Balkan polls

People went to the polls on Sunday in the two former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia, with opposition parties expected to unseat the governments in both countries.

Snap elections were called in eurozone-member Slovenia after the center-left government of Prime Minister Bohut Pahor lost a confidence vote in September, over an austerity package meant to head off a financial crisis.

Opinion polls suggest the center-right Slovenian Democratic Party of former Prime Minister Janez Jansa will likely win the most seats. However, he may need the support of smaller parties to form a government. This would make Pahor the latest in a series of eurozone leaders to be toppled by the sovereign debt crisis.

The country's president, Danilo Turk, said no matter which party takes power, it will be forced to tackle a high budget deficit and rising public debt.

"I believe this process [early elections] will provide a stable government that will then quickly start dealing with all the tasks ahead of us, in particular the financial stabilization and setting the basis for economic development," Turk said after casting his ballot at a polling station in the capital, Ljubljana.

Successful EU candidate

Neighboring Croatia could also be headed for a change of government following Sunday's vote. Opinion polls suggest Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor and her conservative HDZ party are set to be swept out of power by a center-left coalition led by Zoran Milanovic and his Social Democrats.

Croatia is also facing economic problems, but the HDZ, which has dominated the political scene since the country broke off from Yugoslavia in 1991, has been dogged in recent years by a series of corruption scandals. Former HDZ Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who stepped down in 2009, is currently on trial on corruption charges. A number of other senior HDZ officials have also been questioned or arrested over allegations of corruption.

Kosor, whose government has pursued an anti-corruption drive, has attempted to use Croatia's successful bid to join the European Union as an argument to convince voters to return the HDZ to power.

"In the European Union, most of the governments are from the same family of parties as we are, the Christian democratic parties," Kosor told the Associated Press. "That is why it's important that HDZ runs our government once we become an EU member, because it is extremely important that you are among the majority at the table where decisions are made."

Croatia is to set to sign its EU accession treaty at the EU summit on December 9. It is expected to become the bloc's 28th member state in mid-2013.

Author: Chuck Penfold (dpa, Reuters, AFP, AP)
Editor: Martin Kuebler