Collection of signatures for presidential candidates begins on Friday

The period for collecting signatures for candidacy in the presidential elections on the 29th of next month begins tomorrow. 

After the Government's decision to call the elections came into force today, the State Election Commission will publish the forms for the candidacy procedure on its website from midnight. The deadline by which presidential candidacies, supported by 10 thousand signatures, must reach the State Election Commission is December 10th.

From midnight, all potential candidates for president of the country, regardless of whether they are party or independent, begin a 12-day period in which they must collect 10 thousand signatures of support for their candidacy.

“At midnight we will publish all necessary forms. I would like to emphasize that these forms are the only official forms on which signatures can be gathered. Everything lasts until December 10th at midnight. Candidates must deliver ten thousand valid signatures to the State Election Commission. I would like to remind citizens that they can only provide a signature for one candidate. We then have 48 hours to publish legally valid slates. I assume that already the next day, on December 11th in the afternoon, we will publish the legally valid list of candidates and from that moment the official election campaign begins and the campaign should last about 16 days,” said member of the State Election Commission, Slaven Hojski.

The State Election Commission asks candidates and their campaign headquarters to download "announcement of arrival" forms from their website, in order to avoid crowds when submitting candidacies, Due to the renovation of Parliament, the location has also been changed.

“In order to process those ten thousand signatures we need around three hours, we are linked to official registries at the Ministry of Justice, Administration and Digital transformation, which is a registry of voters linked to the residence registry of the Interior Ministry. Naturally we will no longer receive candidacies in Croatian Parliament, but rather, in the first six days we will receive them at the State Election Commission headquarters, and then the next six day at the Zagreb fairground,” said Hojski.

“We have to wait and see if some will even gather the signatures; are some of them even interested or are they only seeking short term media attention. Naturally gathering signatures will not be a problem for parties with a developed infrastructure, but I believe it will be a problem for some. I remind you that at the elections five years ago, we had two candidates who, in the end, received much less votes than signatures,” commented political scientist Jakov Žižić.

All candidates who receive at least 10 percent of the vote, proportionally to the result, are entitled to compensation for campaign expenses. The government has determined that for the highest number of votes, the compensation is 133 thousand euros, and in the second round it drops to 20 percent of the compensation from the first round.

Source: HRT