A centre-left opposition bloc won Croatia's parliamentary election on Sunday, according to exit polls, sweeping aside the ruling conservatives on a mandate to overhaul the flagging economy before it joins the European Union in 2013.
The Kukuriku bloc won 83 seats in the Adriatic country's 151-seat parliament based on results of an exit poll by Nova TV, beating the ruling HDZ into second place with 40. A second exit poll on state television gave exactly the same result.
Voters punished the HDZ - Croatia's dominant party since independence in 1991 - for a string of corruption scandals and rising unemployment.
The Kukuriku ('cock-a-doodle-doo') bloc, led by 45-year-old former diplomat Zoran Milanovic of the Social Democrats (SDS), will have to act fast to trim state spending and avert a potential credit rating downgrade.
Milanovic has told Croats they will have to work "more, harder, longer" to turn the economy around before the country of 4.3 million people becomes the second ex-Yugoslav republic to join the EU in July 2013.
"I have a decent pension but I look around me and I see poverty everywhere," 74-year-old pensioner Milan Grgurek said after voting in the capital, Zagreb. "Whoever comes to power will have to carry out reforms."
Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia in a 1991-95 war, and has seen its economy boom over the past decade on the back of foreign borrowing and waves of tourism to its stunning Adriatic coastline.
But growth ground to a halt when the global financial crisis hit in 2009 and Croatia has been the slowest among central and south-east European countries to crawl back out of recession.