Parliamentary elections were held in Croatia on 2 August 1992, alongside presidential elections. They were the first elections after independence and under the new constitution. All 138 seats in the Chamber of Representatives were up for election. The result was a victory for the Croatian Democratic Union, which won an absolute majority of 85 seats. Voter turnout was 75.6%. Background The circumstances under which the elections took place were extraordinary - one third of the country was occupied by Krajina forces, while Croatia itself was involved in war raging in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina. Few people, however, doubted their legitimacy because the old Parliament, elected under the old Communist Constitution and in a time when Croatia had been part of Yugoslavia, clearly didn't correspond to the new political realities. Although the new Constitution called for two houses of Parliament, only one - House of Representatives - was elected. New electoral laws, written by Smiljko Sokol, were passed and a new voting system - combination of first past the post and proportional representation was introduced. 60 members were to be elected in individual constituencies while 60 seats were to be distributed among those candidates' lists who broke 2% threshold. 12 seats were reserved for expatriate Croatians, while the Parliament had to have at least 15 members belonging to ethnic minorities - 11 Serbs and 4 others. Franjo Tudjman and his Croatian Democratic Union party entered the campaign with great confidence, because Croatia, despite being partially occupied, had won independence and international recognition under his leadership. State-controlled media at the time presented the war as practically won and peaceful reintegration of Krajina a mere formality that would occur in very foreseeable future. However, the very same period saw the emergence of opposition to Tudjman's regime, centred mostly around politicians and parties who criticised Tudjman's conduct of war and found the government to be too appeasing towards the international community and the Serbs. Other opposition leaders were troubled by Tudjman's autocratic tendencies and visible decline of democratic standards in Croatia. The Social Democratic Party of Croatia, which was nominally the main opposition party, based on its representation in the old Parliament, was in comparison somehow friendly towards Tudjman. This could be explained with its precarious position - it lost most of its membership to defections, many of its disgruntled voters defected to other parties, while many Croatians associated that party with Communism. Many