"If they don't move away before elections, they will be moved away," Ivica Racan said in front of several hundred members and sympathisers of the strongest opposition party.
He said the SDP would put to parliament next week a constitutional law aimed at providing for the prosecution of war profiteering, which he said was "a crime that must not become statute-barred and go unpunished". Racan expects all parties, including the HDZ, to support the bill.
Assessing the incumbent government's achievements, he said the HDZ had promised to kickstart Croatia but the "results are the opposite" and that they "have stopped Croatia".
"Croatia must have a better development and a higher growth rate, and this is what the SDP is offering because... it raised a negative rate to 5.5 per cent (when it was the ruling party), while the HDZ reduced it to below four per cent."
Racan said his party was "capable of raising the growth rate to seven per cent" and that it was "ready to take responsibility".
He said there were two ways of entering the European Union, one being "helter-skelter, have them resolve our problems. The other is to pull this country together for our own sake, to normalise it, to ensure development and new jobs... and be appreciated and not trampled when we join... I am for the second one".
Racan went on to say that the SDP was capable of applauding the government's successes, such as the EU negotiating process and highway construction. The HDZ responds to criticisms with attacks, "but the SDP will not give way even when Sanader calls me the albatross around the SDP's neck because he is the biggest albatross around Croatia's neck," he added.
SDP vice president Zeljka Antunovic said increasing numbers of young people were moving abroad because they could not find a job after graduating, that ownership transformation and privatisation had destroyed the economy and halted development, and that the government's educational reform was bad because it cost a lot without bringing actual benefits.