[8] President Tuđman and other HDZ officials traveled abroad and gathered large financial contributions from Croatian expatriates.

On the eve of the 1990 parliamentary elections, the ruling League of Communists of Croatia saw such tendencies within the HDZ as an opportunity to remain in power.

[11] As it strongly advocated Croatian independence, the HDZ was quite unpopular with the Serb minority and others who preferred to see Croatia remain inside the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

This was one of the factors contributing to the creation of the Republic of Serbian Krajina and the subsequent armed conflict in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina.

[citation needed] The HDZ also began to lead Croatia toward a political and economic transition from socialism to capitalism.

According to the HDZ, this process proved a useful distraction from dealing with the baggage of post-World War II communist nationalizations.

Property returned included possessions nationalized from the Catholic Church or widely known individuals such as Gavrilović, the owner of a major meat-producing factory in Petrinja, south of Zagreb.

[citation needed] These people included Mate Granić, who, together with Vesna Škare-Ožbolt, left to form the centre-right Democratic Centre (DC).

[17] This gradually changed as the HDZ and its new leader Ivo Sanader began to distance themselves from the more extreme rhetoric, becoming perceived as moderates.

At first it looked like Sanader would lose, but with the help of Branimir Glavaš and the tacit support of liberal sections of Croatian public opinion, he won at the party convention.

With such a broad and diverse mandate, the Sanader-led government vigorously pursued policies that amounted to the implementation of the basic criteria for joining the European Union, such as the return of refugees to their homes, rebuilding houses damaged in the war, improving minority rights, cooperating with the ICTY, and continuing to consolidate the Croatian economy.

[19] Despite this, the EU's Council of Ministers postponed Croatia's membership negotiations with the union on the grounds of its non-cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia over the case of indicted general Ante Gotovina.

The HDZ gained the support of the "yellow–green coalition" (HSS-HSLS) and of the HSU and national minorities representatives; Sanader formed a second government.

On 1 July 2009, Ivo Sanader abruptly announced his resignation from politics and appointed Jadranka Kosor as his successor.

The "Fimi media" was a corruption scandal which resulted from former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader stealing money from the state budget.

USKOK has charged former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, Fimi media CEO Nevenka Jurak, former treasurer of the Croatian Democratic Union Mladen Barišić, former spokesperson of the Croatian Democratic Union Ratko Maček and former chief accountant Branka Pavošević with damaging the state budget by 70 million kuna or approximately 9 million euros.

Andrija Hebrang accepted his designation as the presidential candidate only at the end of July, after he underwent a thorough medical examination, to exclude any remaining trace of a previous carcinoma.

[26] In the next presidential elections, Croatia was looking for a replacement for Stipe Mesić who had held the position for ten years.

[28] Previously, the investigation had included only Ivo Sanader, treasurers Milan Barišić and Branka Pavošević, general secretaries Branko Vukelić and Ivan Jarnjak and spokesman Ratko Maček.

On 20 May 2012, HDZ held a presidential election in which, a day later, Tomislav Karamarko become the winner[30] and thus replaced Kosor as leader of the opposition.

The party elected former diplomat and member of the European Parliament Andrej Plenković as the new president, who won on a policy platform "devoid of extremes and populism".

[36] In terms of ideology, the HDZ statute, as well as its President Andrej Plenković and Secretary Gordan Jandroković, define the political position of the party as centre-right.

It did not recognize the plurality of identities when addressing its citizens, viewing them as "Catholic Croats" with anti-Serbian sentiments regularly appearing during its assemblies.