Croatian Party of Pensioners

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The Croatian Party of Pensioners (Croatian: Hrvatska Stranka Umirovljenika) is a Croatian political party.

The Party was formed due to number of political, economic and demographic reasons. In early 1990s Croatian state deprived pensioners of their pensions in order to finance the war. At the same time, pension funds were used as a tool for businessman close to Franjo Tuđman to enrich themselves during the privatisation. As a result, Croatian pensioners are the section of society that became most impoverished and most embittered during that period. At the same time, it was noted that the pensioners were the section of electorate most likely to vote, and their number increased due to demographic trends and state-owned companies prefering to send their employees to early retirement rather than sacking and thus affecting unemployment statistics.

When the party was founded, few people took it seriously and many commentators speculated that the ultimate purpose of HSU was take away pensioners' votes from rejuvenated SDP and thus help ruling HDZ remain in power. However, the Party gradually built its organisation throughout the country and slowly rose in popularity due to both HDZ and left-centre cabinets of Ivica Račan refusing to honour Constitutional Court verdict that ordered government to pay back pensions that had been denied in early 1990s.

The party is led by Vladimir Jordan. At the last legislative elections, 23 November 2003, the party won 4.0% of the popular vote and 3 out of 151 seats.

After the elections HSU has agreed to support Ivo Sanader as new prime minister and provided necessary votes for HDZ and its allies to form majority in Croatian Parliament. De facto coallition remains to this day, although HSU supported Stipe Mesić against HDZ candidate Jadranka Kosor on 2005 presidential election.

HSU gained much notoriety after local and regional elections in May 2005 when many of its members got elected on left-centre election tickets only to support HDZ and right-wing parties during the forming of coalition governments.