As Australia was waking up to its first post-ALP-win-induced hangover after 11 years, striding into a sunny Sunday, my eyes and ears opened to another election day, this one some 18,000 kilometres away – in Croatia.

The said election was, in fact, not as far away as it may seem, given that Saturday was the day all dual citizens of Croatia in Australia could vote to keep the incumbent conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ)-led government in power, or give the new mandate to its archrivals – the Social Democratic Party (SDP). For anyone who knows anything about the Croatian political environment, the previous sentence was a moment in a TV skit where audience should have been prompted to laugh.

Let me explain. The eleventh electoral unit, also known as the diaspora vote, is what in Australian political terms would be described as a “safe seat”, no matter where its boundaries begin (Bosnia and Herzegovina), or where they end (New Zealand). Almost as one, they vote HDZ (the current election count has the HDZ diaspora vote at 76,53 per cent), with other conservatives and a few independents picking up the rest of the vote. Put simply, the diaspora is no place to look for support for the centre-left. And for Croatians at home, this is no laughing matter.

On Sunday, both HDZ and SDP called the election victories, advising Croatians they both expect to be given the mandate to form  Government. The result is now hanging on the diaspora vote and the ability of either party to form a coalition after the election, as each party has fallen short of the 77 seats required for a majority victory.

Croatia itself is divided into ten electoral units with 6,707 voting places, where the 4, 073, 294 residents of Croatia can vote to elect 140 parliamentary representatives. The twelfth electoral unit is reserved for national minorities.

The diaspora, with some 400,000 eligible voters, remains a powerful force in steering Croatia’s political course. Unlike Croatians at home, who this year voted on the issues of corruption, the economy and Croatia’s EU-ascendance, the diaspora tends to vote on ideological grounds alone.

In Croatia, SDP is seen as the option favoured by the urban population and the younger members of the society, while HDZ is often depicted as synonymous with the rural and less educated social strata and the diaspora.

The real division, however, lies deeper in the political fabric of the region. The most significant part of the diaspora vote comes from Bosnia and Herzegovina, where some 250,000 residents are eligible to vote in the neighbouring country’s election. The majority of this vote follows nationalistic patterns, which have been seen as the main obstacle to regional economic and EU integration progress over the last decade.

This block has little sympathy for that part of the Croatian society that would like to leave the decade of nationalist-driven policies behind. Likewise, most Croatians would like to see the diaspora’s voting privileges removed, seeing it as ironic that the diaspora’s loyalty to ‘the homeland’ is mainly based on the benefits of owning a Croatian passport, while their taxes are paid to foreign governments and their political choices continue to impede Croatia’s European integration. And this doesn’t only go for the vote coming from their closest neighbour.

Some 100,000 ethnic Croats in Australia, who have the lowest rate of return to the homeland of the entire Croatian émigré community, are also seen as some of the staunchest supporters of HDZ policies in Croatia. (Incidentally, this group is said to be one of the most homogenous in their support for the Liberal Party of Australia.) In Croatia, their choices are also seen as completely agnostic to the ‘real state of affairs at home’ and are a subject of much resentment amongst the population.

All things being equal, it appears that the sixth democratic election in Croatia is going to be decided by Bosnian Croats, Australians of Croatian origin, Croatian Argentinians, Canadians and Americans, and various other incarnations of the Croat ethnicity around the globe. Some of them will not even be able to read the election results in their ‘native’ language. But that’s the price of ‘ethnic politics’ Croatia will have to pay in 2007.