1st LD Writethru: Turnout low in Croatian early election, president urges citizens to vote

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic on Sunday urged citizens to vote in an early parliamentary election, the second time in ten months.

She said she hopes for a bigger turnout and that all eligible voters should go to vote because it is the time to decide future.

"Croatia has no time to waste and I hope the new government will be formed as soon as possible," she added.

Meanwhile, the State Election Commission (DIP) said the turnout by 11:30 a.m, was 18.86 percent, three percent lower than last elections held in Nov. 2015.

But Croatian Parliament Speaker Zeljko Reiner was confident about the turnout, saying by 7 p.m. when polling stations close the turnout would go higher.

From 7:00 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) on Sunday, around 3.8 million eligible voters started to cast their ballots through 6,750 polling stations across the country to elect a 151-member new parliament from 2,456 candidates.

Some 140 members will be elected in the ten constituencies across the country, with eight from national minorities, and three from Croatian citizens residing abroad, according to the law.

Poll stations will be closed at 7 p.m. local time (1700 GMT) and the DIP will publish the preliminary results at about 10 p.m. local time (2000 GMT).

The pre-election surveys suggested the election was unlikely to produce a clear winner again. It showed main party Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) would get 58 seats while its rival People's Coalition, led by opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP), would win 62 seats.

The situation would make them look for the supports from smaller parties -- similar with last election in which the newly founded party MOST became the third winner with 19 seats and played a kingmaker role in forming a government.

After months' negotiations HDZ and MOST formed a Coalition government, but it stepped down only five months later following a no-confidence vote in June.

Analysts here worried that a similar scenario was likely to happen this time and would prolong talks on forming a government and that potentially another election would harm the country's economy which emerged from a six-year recession in 2015 and still remained one of the European Union's weakest.

Croatian public debt reaches 85 percent of gross domestic product, unemployment stands at more than 13 percent and foreign investments have been declining sharply in recent years.

Whoever forms the next government would face these tough tasks, according to analysts. Enditem