Pharma exec put forward as PM to settle Croatian standoff
A coalition of conservative parties in Croatia put forward Wednesday a pharmaceutical executive as a candidate for prime minister to try to end a political standoff since inconclusive elections last month.
"We agreed upon premier-designate... a non-partisan person, Tihomir Oreskovic," leader of the small Most party, Bozo Petrov, told reporters.
Most ("Bridge") and the larger HDZ informed President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic on Tuesday that they had secured the support of a majority of deputies in the 151-seat parliament.
Grabar-Kitarovic was expected to decide later on Wednesday to name Oreskovic, the chief financial officer for global generic medicines at Teva, as PM-designate or call fresh elections.
The breakthrough in forming a coalition comes more than six weeks after the November 8 election that failed to produce an outright winner.
The incumbent Social Democrats and the HDZ struggled to cobble together a coalition with reforms needed to spur Croatia's economy, which is only slowly emerging from six years of recession and now faces an unprecedented influx of refugees on their way to northern Europe, the main subject of negotiations.
Oreskovic, 49, is former chief executive officer of Croatia's largest pharmaceutical company PLIVA, which became a unit of global generics giant Teva Group.