ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the question of why the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) has succeeded in maintaining overwhelming support among the Croat population in Herzegovina throughout the 1990s. In the first pluralist elections of November 1990, the HDZ candidates won between 94 and 100 percent of the votes in the four predominantly Croat municipalities located west of the Neretva River, which have belonged to the Western Herzegovina Canton since 1995. As the general elections approached, the HDZ united its ranks and plunged itself vigorously into the election campaign in Herzegovina and all other Croat areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina. As early as 1990, and especially after the war started in 1992, another topic became ubiquitous in public discourse: the issue of the Herzegovinian Croats killed at the end of World War II. The city of Mostar and the region south-east of the Neretva were directly affected by war activities and suffered large-scale destruction.
