In Herceg-Bosna, the patriotic Croatianism, as the recent elections have demonstrated, is going as strong as during the most glorious days of the national democratic upheaval. In Dalmatia, as the gathering in Gripe and the promotion of Ivankovic's book about president Tudman in Split indicate, Tudman's Croatianism is still very much alive. In Zagreb, however, as could be seen from the failed protest against the Balkan summit, that Croatianism hardly enjoys any support. It is likely that there is a bit of truth in all of that. Another problem is probably the tardiness of the protest.
Organization is definitely among the causes of the fiasco.
However, a party is not made up from its leadership, but from its grass roots support. In other words, the strength of a party lies in its capability to move its members and supporters to action and we saw that even in pro-regime public opinion polls the protesters could count on support of about 40 percent of the public. In that sense the Zagreb defeat is above all a defeat of the HDZ and political forces close to it. The HDZ and these forces should, if they do care about that, draw certain lessons from the defeat. The importance of political professionalism is revealed best by the previous occasion on which Zagreb residents went out to the streets, the demonstrations in support of Radio 101.