Croatia elects first female president

A conservative populist has become Croatia's first female president after defeating the center-left incumbent in a run-off election amid widespread discontent over economic woes in the European Union's newest member.

With 99.3 percent of votes counted, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, a former diplomat was ahead by the thinnest of margins —50.40 percent to 49.60 percent for incumbent Ivo Josipovic.

She told her supporters: "There is no room for triumphalism. ... Let's work for the prosperity of our country."

The election was expected to be close. In the first round two weeks ago, Josipovic won 38.5 percent of the vote, just edging Grabar-Kitarovic with 37.2 percent. The run-off was called because neither candidate captured more than 50 percent needed to win outright.

The presidency in Croatia is a largely ceremonial position, but the vote was considered an important test for the main political parties before the parliamentary elections expected in the second half of the year.

The victory for Grabar-Kitarovic —giving her a five-year term — greatly boosts the chances of her center-right Croatian Democratic Union to win back power.

After six years of recession, unemployment is running at 19 percent in the ex-Yugoslav republic of 4.4 million people, which joined the European Union last July. High taxes and poor administration hamper business and the economy is not expected to grow in 2015.

"I expect a certain shift in foreign policy, with a little more focus on NATO and the EU and a little less on the (Balkan) region," said Andjelko Milardovic of the Institute for Migrations, a Zagreb-based think-tank, adding the result was a pointer to the parliamentary election.

Josipovic, who was seeking a second five-year term with the support of the increasingly unpopular ruling Social Democrats, won the first round of the election on Dec. 28 by a narrow margin.

Grabar-Kitarovic, 46, a former foreign minister and ambassador to Washington, campaigned on the need for a change of course and a more active head of state to help the country overcome its worst economic crisis since independence in 1991. She takes office as Croatia’s first woman president on Feb. 19.

The HDZ Croatia from its first democratic election in 1990 until its founder, President Franjo Tudjman, died in December 1999. Since then it has alternated in power with the Social Democrats but has never regained the presidential post.

Wire services