Croatians cast ballots for president

ZAGREB, Dec 28 (AFP): Croatians cast ballots on Sunday to elect a president under the cloud of a deep economic crisis, with incumbent Ivo Josipovic seen as the frontrunner as he sought a second term leading the EU's newest member state.
Surveys ahead of the vote showed that of the four candidates vying for the largely ceremonial post, the 57-year-old centre-left leader had only one serious rival: Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic of the main opposition conservative HDZ.
With none of the candidates expected to win more than 50 percent outright, a run-off round on January 11 is likely.
Social Democrat Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic, who voted in downtown Zagreb, voiced hope that bad weather and snow that hit most of the country Sunday overnight would not affect turnout.
At 1030 GMT, four and a half hours after polling stations opened, turnout was 13.19 percent, the electoral commission said. It was some two percent more than at the same time five years ago.
The soft-spoken Josipovic-the popular third president of the former Yugoslav republic since independence in 1991 -- is a member of Milanovic's Social Democratic Party (SDP), the main partner in the ruling coalition.
A former law professor who won office on an anti-corruption ticket, Josipovic famously played Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" on piano when Croatia joined the European Union in 2013 hoping membership would revive its flagging economy.
But the tourism-reliant economy of the small Adriatic nation of 4.2 million remains one of the EU's weakest after six years of recession.