News Analysis: Narrow victory for Croatia's first female president-elect

Croatian opposition party presidential candidate Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic beat her incumbent rival in a run-off vote on Sunday, becoming the first female head of state in the country.

Grabar-Kitarovic, 46, former foreign minister and a diplomat, served as the assistant secretary general for public diplomacy for NATO and Croatia's ambassador to the United States, scored a narrow victory with 50.43 percent of the vote against Ivo Josipovic with 49.57 percent, based on the 99.51 percent of ballots counted, according to the state election commission on Monday.

Her victory showed that Croatia, a new member of the European Union (EU), is ideologically highly divided and the citizens expect change to get out of the recession which lasted six years, driving nationwide unemployment rates to nearly 20 percent, analysts in Zagreb said.

Professor Ivan Rimac from the University of Zagreb's law department said on Croatian public television network HTV, that Grabar-Kitarovic won due to her rhetoric about the unity of Croatia.

"We have had enough of divisions," she said in her campaign, calling those who voted for Josipovic to become part of her team and to unite so as to help Croatia emerge from crisis.

She said she would see that Croatia became one of the most developed countries in the EU and the world.

Analysts believed Josipovic's defeat was partly owing to the fact the ruling coalition, which supported Josipovic's candidacy, had failed to reform the huge and inefficient public sector, improve the business climate or attract EU development funds.

Some viewed Grabar-Kitarovic's victory, backed by the largest opposition party Croatian Democratic Union, was likely to bolster the party's position ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for late 2015.

However, others said Grabar-Kitarovic won the presidential office with the votes of people who no longer live in the country.

According to the election data, Grabar-Kitarovic received 91.11 percent of the vote abroad, while Josipovic won 8.89 percent only. In the countries with the largest Croatian communities, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Germany, Grabar-Kitarovic won 93.80 percent and 94.12 percent of the vote respectively.

Some political observers stressed the fact that Grabar-Kitarovic's unexpected win by a margin of some 20,000 votes only meant the victory would undermine her authority.

Also, as head of state, she too would be held partly responsible for the poor economy, they said. Endit