At midnight, the campaign for the local elections ended and the election silence began. Candidates and political parties have said what they had to say. On Sunday, it's the turn of voters who will decide who will lead their municipalities, cities and counties for the next four years and represent them in councils and assemblies.
The election silence lasts all Saturday and Sunday until 19 p.m., i.e. until the closing of the 6600 polling stations that will be open on Sunday.
The State Election Commission (SEC) has called on all election participants, as well as citizens and the media, to respect silence, especially since high fines are prescribed for its violation.
They range from 398 euros for a natural person to 66.361 euros for a legal entity, such as a political party, that violates the silence. The responsible person in the legal entity and candidates can be fined from 1327 to 3981 euros.
Violations of electoral silence are reported to municipal, city and county election commissions and the City of Zagreb Election Commission, whose contact details are published on the SEC website.
It is forbidden to present programs or persuade voters.
While the silence is in effect, election participants may not publicly present election programs, voters may not be persuaded to vote for a specific list or candidate, and it is prohibited to publish assessments of election results, statements and interviews of election participants.
It is also prohibited to publish campaign messages and photos of candidates in the media, place new campaign posters or leaflets, and send phone calls, SMS messages or emails to voters.
The SEC calls on candidates, parties and citizens not to post new promotional content such as statuses, video clips, images or comments on social networks or platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, X, TikTok and others, which are published directly on the front pages as news or on the private profiles of connected private social network users.
Obligations of the media and media publishers
It calls on the media and media publishers not to publish photographs, statements, interviews, or broadcast any press conferences, public events, or public addresses by election participants, regardless of whether the topic is directly related to the elections or any other topic.
It also calls on them to remove from their programming content anything that constitutes election propaganda, such as advertisements, links and image links-advertisements (banners) on portals that lead to the websites of election participants.
Slightly more than 3.5 million Croatian voters will elect local representative and executive authorities on Sunday, for which 31.082 candidates are running.
The elections in seven cities and 112 municipalities have already been decided, as only one candidate ran in each. The compositions of 35 municipal councils, for which only one list was presented, are also known.
Croatia has 428 municipalities, 127 cities and 20 counties, Zagreb has a special status as a city and county.
Unlike all other elections, in local elections voters can only vote in their place of residence.
Photo: HINA/Lana Slivar Dominić
