After the second round of elections on Sunday, May 30, the citizens of Split had elected Ivica Puljak, the candidate of the liberal party ‘Centar’, as the new mayor. Puljak, who is a renowned university professor and a researcher in the field of physics, most notable for being a part of the team working on the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN in Switzerland, will replace the incumbent Andro Krstulović Opara who has previously decided not to re-run for the mayoral position.
In the second round of elections Ivica Puljak has received a total of 35.565 votes, amounting to 56.75 percent of total votes, with his opponent, HDZ’s Vice Mihanović, raking in 27.106 votes or 43.25 percent of total votes. A total of 43.53 percent of citizens eligible for the vote had cast their votes in this round of elections.
Puljak and his party Centar won’t have it easy in the city council where they hold just 7 out of 31 seats. It is expected that the strong opposition of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) (9 seats) and Željko Kerum’s Hrvatska Građanska Stranka (HGS) (4 seats) will force Centar to cater to all of the other parties who had won seats in the council, like the Social-democratic Party (SDP), Pametno, Most (each with 3 seats) and the Independent list of Tomislav Mamić (2 seats). Whether Puljak and Centar will be able to obtain and maintain the required support of at least 16 council members will be made apparent in the coming months.