Ivo Josipovic at a school in a Zagreb suburb. | Photo: Facebook

Despite pleas from the state ombudsman for children’s rights, politicians campaigning for this weekend’s parliamentary elections have been seeking to endear themselves to the public by posing for photographs with children.

Although there is no law against using children in political campaigning in Croatia, children’s rights ombudsman Ivana Milas Klaric called on politicians before the start of the campaign not to use children as political “decoration” at rallies or on campaign posters.

“I call on politicians and organisers of election meetings not to exploit children for their own political gain,” Milas Klaric said on October 2.

But her pleas however been ignored during the campaign.

Tomislav Karamarko, president of the strongest opposition party, the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, was happy to pose with a family and their small child while visiting Croatian voters in the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Former Croatian President Ivo Jospovic, now the president of centre-left Croatia Ahead – Progressive Alliance, meanwhile visited a school in a Zagreb suburb and posted pictures of himself with pupils on his official Facebook page earlier this month.

The right-wing Croatian Democratic Assembly of Slavonia and Baranja, HDSSB, has posted various pictures on its Facebook page of party officials posing with children during door-to-door campaigning.

Right-wing politician Branimir Glavas poses with a child.| Photo: Facebook

The official Facebook page of Branimir Glavas, the HDSSB’s honorary president, features a number of photos in which he poses or shakes hands with children.

Glavas, who is awaiting retrial on war crimes charges but stands a good chance of becoming an MP, caused controversy in August when a photo of him posing with a bottle of wine with Adolf Hitler on the label was posted on his own Facebook page.

Although some believe that using children in the campaign goes against the elections’ ethics code, there is sanction for those who break it.

The governing centre-left Social Democratic Party, SDP, reported the HDZ to the ethics committee, the state body that oversees the electoral ethics code, after HDZ party officials visited a children’s hospital and orphanage in Zagreb on October 26.

Although the ethics committee found that the visits were “made for the purpose of election advertising”, it concluded that from the photos attached to the SDP’s complaint, it “could not find a violation of the provisions of the elections’ ethics code”.