Voting in Croatia's elections began yesterday in a poll that Western politicians hope will see the nationalist politics of deceased president Franjo Tudjman swept away. Opinion polls put a liberal opposition coalition ahead of the nationalist HDZ ruling party, which has controlled Croatia since leading it in a war of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.
But opposition leaders fear a "Tudjman effect" - a vote of sympathy for Mr Tudjman, who died last month and who was revered as the "father of the nation", even by Croats who disliked his party. The first wave of voting yesterday was itself contentious, involving votes for Bosnian Croats who, under rules made by Mr Tudjman, are entitled to vote in Croatian elections even though they are citizens of another country.
Western diplomats trying to knit a still fractured Bosnia back together have opposed this practice, which they see as helping to keep Croats divided from their Serb and Muslim former enemies.
In Croatia itself, an opposition block of liberals and social democrats say if they win they will break up an oligarchy they claim Mr Tudjman created to run the country. They say this oligarchy, extending across politics, business, the military and the media, has distorted the economy, making legitimate business impossible and corruption a way of life.
"The most important thing we will have to deal with is the economy, getting Croatia out of the economic crisis," said the Social Democrats' prime ministerial candidate, Mr Ivica Racan.
Croatia is indeed in a mess. After a promising start following its split from Yugoslavia in 1991, the country has nose-dived. Foreign investment has slowed amid claims of corruption.
More than 3,000 international monitors have arrived in the country to watch the polls, amid opposition claims that the HDZ will try to manipulate the results.
But the ruling party has its own problems. Mr Tudjman never nominated a deputy, running Croatia as his personal fiefdom, and the choice of a successor threatens to split the party. The candidate for the presidential elections, due in three weeks' time, is the Foreign Minister, Mr Mate Granic, a personable moderate, but his selection has angered nationalists.
The HDZ has made the memory of Mr Tudjman the centrepiece of its election campaign, distributing posters showing him with a young girl on his knee with the slogan "Everything for Croatia". In the capital, Zagreb, graffiti artists, mindful of corruption allegations, have scribbled "Everything for Myself".