However, when everyone expected internal changes in these parties and a search for the causes of the electoral debacle, the NHI leadership started giving "interesting" statements. Vlado Raguz, the head of the Sarajevo county board of the NHI claims that his party is a "moral winner" of the elections, even though his party won only several hundred votes in the capital. The public was still recovering form this statement when Kresimir Zubak, the NHI leader, stepped on the stage.
According to Zubak, the NHI bears no responsibility for its election defeat. Although three days before the elections he kept repeating that the referendum would not help the HDZ to avoid a defeat, he now keeps saying that the referendum is to be blamed for everything. Instead of offering a resignation to a handful of the members of his party, as a moral act after a debacle in the elections, Zubak is demanding from the OSCE to drastically punish the HDZ. Zubak believes that the most "honest" solution would be to totally eliminate the HDZ and to turn over their seats in the parliament and local authorities to the NHI. Had OSCE by some chance listened to Zubak's suggestions, and that is still in play, Croats would be in the government represented by the NHI although that party received only about 15,000 votes.
Zubak would very gladly compensate for such a moral downfall with participation in the government. Fortunately for Croat voters, the OSCE decided not to offer that pleasure to the former HDZ leader, so that the NHI will continue to try to influence the political events in this country from the margins.
Zubak is obviously not prepared to accept that by rejecting the referendum and boycotting the Croat People's Assembly he made a strategic mistake, which resulted in significantly worse results for his party than those they obtained in the local elections. Naturally, the referendum helped the HDZ to win over Croat voters, but no one can claim that the same would not have happened to the NHI if the only policy of this party were not "anything as long as it harms the HDZ". If the HDZ supports the Assembly, then we oppose it, the NHI leaders said before the elections. Such political logic turned out not to be efficient, and the punishment was swift.
Besides, Zubak demonstrated with his attitude towards the referendum that he does not understand the mentality of the people he wants to represent. In this country people would do anything out of spite, and exactly spite was the decisive factor in the recent elections, as well in the referendum. Zubak failed that lesson from the psychology of his own nation.