Let us for now put aside a comprehensive political science and sophisticated communicological analyses. There will be time. If we were to capture what happened in the 1152 local elections in Croatia in one word, no, it would not be that the new ones won. It would be more accurate to say that the different won. For the most part, they’re new, too, but that doesn’t fully describe what happened. And even if you knew nothing about them, at first glance you can see that Možemo! [We Can!] are different, least because they come to work by bike. Ivan Radić in Osijek and Petra Škrobot in Samobor are different by the very fact that they are young. Goran Pauk, despite years of experience, did not have a chance, because Marko Jelić was different. Vice Mihanović had the full support of Plenković and the party behind him, but Ivica Puljak was a little different. Over the years, the SDSS has managed to completely monopolize the support of the Serbs in Croatia, but in vain. Branka Bakšić does it differently. I doesn’t matter if the independents are truly independent, it is important that they too, in large numbers, were different. Most [Bridge] and the Homeland Movement may have used these elections to expand the organization or establish positions. The real success was lacking probably because they weren’t different enough.
The different ones won even in Istria. But the different did not bring about only change. The SDP kept Rijeka because it is different from the rest of the SDP. Ever since Milanović took over the party, Rijeka's SDP has remained different. Ivan Anušić in Osijek or Željko Burić in Šibenik, although they probably share little other than a membership card, won because they are unmistakably different from the rest of the HDZ. Mirko Duspara in Slavonski Brod, Matija Posavec in Međimurje or Željko Kolar in Zagorje were already different before. That is why Enio Meštrović and Richard, so different from each other, symbolize this year's local elections in the best way.
Once upon a time, before there was a modern state, borders and passports, such different people were called foreigners. They spoke in incomprehensible language, dressed ridiculously and behaved strangely. The beginnings of tourism on the Adriatic still inherited this old-fashioned attitude towards the different. If someone used the sea for swimming, and especially if he did it naked, you knew immediately that he was a stranger. They won these elections differently – the paradox is logical – because they were close to us, not foreign. They were closer and more understandable to us than the ones we called ours. How many of the 200,000 votes for Tomašević do you think are those who voted for Bandić until yesterday?
When a stranger becomes close to you, then the real question is: what have we been involved in so far? In fully mediatized politics. In hyperbolic media productions deprived of real political content. In the media illusion created by money that local governments transferred to the media in their area. In principle, the most important thing is the campaign: it can spoil everything that is deserved and achieve everything that is undeserved. Politics was reduced to a quick media reaction, to timely rented advertising space, to making noise when you are in trouble, to covering up, to propaganda, to everything but politics. It is no wonder that communicologists and PR experts are increasingly commenting on politics.
The different ones seem more normal in this election. As if they are at least one foot on the ground, they are more realistic, coming from reality rather than from the cathode-ray tube. Of course, they also use the media, some very successfully, but you have the impression that the media are a tool, not the starting point of their policy. They seem more convincing because they are prepared outside the media field, because they have political content, and if you will, also because they do not reduce political strategy to media strategy. Neither a democratic politician nor an actor exists without an audience. Still, a good actor never prepares for an audience. He prepares his role away from the public eye and largely in solitude. When they say that he “stole the show”, be sure that the spotlight only shone on that what was created much earlier. Somehow it seems to me that this is exactly what connects our different in this election: building a content based politics, for sure not in complete solitude or secrecy, but certainly before its mediatization.
At the very other end is an SDP member, Ante Franić, a man you couldn’t say for sure if he was a candidate for mayor of Split or a neon self-promotion that rejects you rather than draws you to a cafe. Andrej Filipović already structurally did not have a chance, but also because he was visibly preparing for performances. And when you are visibly preparing for performances, this can be observed easily. IDS leased more space in Glas Istre with public money. In the second round, Škoro and his men started real internet mining: they had to list the budgets of half of the NGO’s in Croatia, add them up for the last eight years, and then separate the money coming from abroad, subsuming it under special category: “Soros”. Most has long since chosen a similar development strategy: relying on media-exposed people, locally sharing the political franchise with complete strangers, and probably not, at the same time, moving much away from the party’s initial 400 members. There is no way it can return to Metković. Everything went bust on the day when Božo Petrov, after promising to give everything for Metković, removed himself up from the position of mayor after two years and went straight to Zagreb. Davor Plenković’s HDZ is increasingly agreeing with this bloc.
The different ones, at the time, still offered some political content. Even when it seemed epochal obsolete, as in the case of Knin Mayor Marko Jelić, whose insistence that “all citizens of the county should be equal and treated equally” is reminiscent of the ideas of the French Revolution that took place some 200 years ago, such political content seemed far more realistic than, say, Filipović’s vaccine factories. When Goran Pauk, now the former prefect of Šibenik-Knin County, was asked what had happened, he cited the “material fatigue”. To the same question, his party friend Željko Burić, who won in the same city where Pauk lost, answered with both feet on the ground, according to the motto “New generations are coming who are not interested in our tricks”.
The different and different from each other as well. There is little that ideologically connects Marko Jelić from Knin and Možemo! from Zagreb, and almost nothing that connects Ivan Radić from Osijek and Filip Zoričić from Pula. Again, we get the impression they are at the same job. Maybe politics as usual really bored the majority. It is impossible, and unnecessary, to predict the development of the situation in each of these several hundred municipalities and cities. Let us now let go of sophisticated political science and comprehensive communicological analyzes. It will be enough to react like when they prepare lamb in Moroccan, with a handful of spices, and for years we have always prepared it exclusively traditionally, “braised with peas”. You can't say much, except, “It’s kind of different”.
