"We won't decide on anything today, but new faces will appear (in next year's local elections). The party is only moving forward," he said at a panel in the southern seaport organised on the 13th anniversary of the death of the first Croatian president, Franjo Tudjman.
Karamarko said every European country had a politician in the 20th century who did a historic act for his country at a crucial moment, and that in Croatia that was Tudjman.
He said Tudjman's political doctrine "closes with Croatia's accession to the EU because we are fulfilling his programme. We want to firmly incorporate Tudjman into our party's ideology, but in Croatian society as well. He brought democracy and freedom as well."
Asked by the press to comment on some HDZ members' renouncing of the party in recent years, Karamarko said the party was not made of ideal people but institutions. "There were deviations in our party. As for corruption and crime and similar manifestations we fought against, I launched those processes. Nobody else. No other party. Either in 1994 or in 2008."