CROATIA - Croatia and Slovenia - page 64

Glagolitic script to invoke Croat culture and further differentiate Croatian from Serbia's
Cyrillic alphabet. Fortunately for tourists, this plan didn't take off.
After Tu đ man's death in 1999, Croatia began the new millennium with a more truly
democratic leader, Stipe Mesi ć . The popular Mesi ć , who was once aligned with Tu đ man,
had split off and formed his own political party when Tu đ man's politics grew too extreme.
Tu đ man spent years tampering with the constitution to give himself more and more power,
butwhenMesi ć tookover,hereversedthosechangesandhandedmoreauthoritybacktothe
parliament.
After a successful decade as president, the term-limited Stipe Mesi ć stepped down in
2010. Ivo Josipovi ć , running on a strong anti-corruption platform, won by a landslide, and
within months had exceeded his predecessor's already high popularity rating.
Franjo Tu đ man (1922-1999)
Independent Croatia's first president was the controversial Franjo Tu đ man (FRAHN-
yoh TOOJ-mahn). Tu đ man began his career fighting for Tito on the left, but later had
a dramatic ideological swing to the far right. His anticommunist, highly nationalist-
ic HDZ party was the driving force for Croatian statehood, making him the young
nation's first poster boy. But even as he fought for independence from Yugoslavia,
his own ruling style grew more and more authoritarian. Today, years after his death,
Tu đ man remains a polemical figure.
Before entering politics, Tu đ man was a military officer. He fought for Tito's Par-
tisans in World War II, and was the youngest general in the Yugoslav People's Army.
But later in life, Tu đ man—now a professional historian—became a Croatian nation-
alist who revered the Ustaše, Croatia's Nazi-affiliated government during World War
II. Because the Ustaše governed the first “independent” Croatian state since the 12th
century, Tu đ man considered them Croatian “freedom fighters.” But that same state
hadmurderedhundredsofthousandsofSerbsinitsconcentrationcamps.(Inahistory
book he authored, Tu đ man controversially deflated this estimate to between 30,000
and 60,000—a figure no legitimate historian accepts.)
In the 1980s—following Tito's death, and as Yugoslavia began to un-
ravel—Tu đ man gained support for his nationalistic, anticommunist political party,
the Croatian Democratic Union ( Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica, HDZ). In 1990,
Croatia's first free elections of the post-Tito era, voters decisively supported Tu đ man
andtheHDZ—effectivelyvotingoutthecommunists.In1992,Tu đ manwasformally
elected president.