The Democratic Centre (Croatian: Demokratski centar or DC) is a Croatian political party.
The Party was formed in 2000 by Mate Granić and Vesna Škare-Ožbolt after they left the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) following the party's defeat in the January 2000 election and Mate Granić's defeat in the February 2000 presidential race. Upon their foundation DC described themselves as a "moderate version of HDZ".
Following HDZ's return to power in the 2003 general election, DC (which had been informally allied with HDZ during the election) gained a single seat in Croatian Parliament and a single ministerial post in the Croatian Government. Vesna Škare-Ožbolt, the party's leader and their only representative elected to parliament, was appointed Justice Minister in the Cabinet of Ivo Sanader I. She held the post from December 2003 to February 2006, when she was forced to step down by Prime Minister Ivo Sanader following allegations that she leaked information to the press and opposed certain government policies, although some media pundits ascribed her resignation to her prominent public stance and ministerial results which overshadowed HDZ ministers. Since then, DC is as an opposition party.
Since 15 October 2002, the Democratic Centre is an observer member of the European People's Party (EPP).
In the most recent 2007 general elections DC ran in coalition with the Green Party but failed to win any seats in the 153-seat parliament. Vesna Škare-Ožbolt also ran for President in the 2009–10 election as a formally independent candidate but only managed to win 37,373 or 1.89% of votes in the first round, finishing 11th out of 12 candidates.
Famous quotes containing the words democratic and/or centre:
“The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal—that you can gather votes like box tops—is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)
“To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen.... But to emigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)