Croatian President Stjepan Mesic has formally called the parliamentary elections for Nov. 25 this year, Mesic's office announced in the Croatian capital Zagreb on Wednesday.
The vote will be the sixth since the Balkan country proclaimed its independence from federal Yugoslavia in 1991.
Mesic's announcement came five days after the previous parliament was dissolved with a unanimous vote last Friday in preparation for the polls.
According to the political party registry, Croatia has 101 political parties that can run in the elections. Lists with independent candidates can also be proposed for the ballot.
Latest opinion polls show that the main opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP) is narrowly ahead of Prime Minister Ivo Sanader's conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ).
The HDZ has won all but one of the previous general elections, losing only in 2000, when a broad center-left coalition led by the SDP managed to remove it from power shortly after the death of its founding father, President Franjo Tudjman.
Analysts believe neither of the two major parties looks set to be able to form a government on its own, so a coalition with smaller parties is mostly likely.
However, both main parties are committed to Croatia's goals of securing a NATO membership invitation next year and joining the European Union around 2010, and the election is unlikely to affect the country's broadly reformist course.
The election campaigning will officially start on Nov. 3, and end on Nov. 24, 24 hours before the day of the ballot.
Parliamentary elections are conducted in 10 electoral units in Croatia and in two special ones, one for the Croatian Diaspora and Croatian nationals residing abroad, and one for Croatia's national minorities.
The Croatian constitution stipulates that the parliament can have no less than 100 and no more than 160 deputies. The parliament members will be elected on the basis of direct, universal and equal suffrage for a four-year term.
Source: Xinhua
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