An agreement on the merger of the parties Fokus and Republika was signed in Zagreb on Saturday. The merged party will retain the name Fokus and its current president, Gabriel Deak, while the former head of the Republika party, Damir Vanđelić, will serve as deputy president.
Deak stated after the signing that the party will continue to be called Fokus following the merger and that he would remain its president. He said that, in addition to Vanđelić, Petra Škrobot, the mayor of Samobor, would also serve as deputy president. He announced that the technical aspects of the merger would be carried out over the next month.
"We are preparing for the parliamentary elections. This merger is just the first step," Deak said. He noted that Vanđelić and he had already spoken with other smaller and regional parties that share their views. He warned that Croatia had lost 350,000 inhabitants in the last 10 years, while the state administration had grown by at least 30,000 people. Deak advocated for an independent judiciary, describing the state of the judiciary as a "great open wound in Croatian society".
Vanđelić described the merger as a "good step". He said that Republika had entered the previous elections just a few months after its founding. "We were unprepared, but this time we will be better prepared," Vanđelić said. He announced a broader coalition and highlighted that the two parties have a good ideological overlap and two years of cooperation behind them. He asserted that the state takes half of citizens' earnings through income tax and VAT, and noted that the average wait time for a building permit in Split is more than 450 days. He advocated for young people not paying VAT on housing and having lower taxes for the first ten years or so.
Aleksandar Saša Milaković, coordinator of the Fokus executive board, said that the parties were not merging out of political opportunism but because of the same ideology of economic liberalism. He assessed that all three largest parties in Croatia are left-wing in economic terms. "A big state is one that today prescribes how many coat hooks a café must have, what colour the tablecloths will be, and the height of the bar counter," Milaković said.
