Ivo Baldasar
Ivo Baldasar (born August 5, 1958) is a Croatian politician who served as the Mayor of Split from 2013 to March 2017. He started his career as a lawyer in the tourism and maritime industries.
He joined the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1998 and became a Split city councillor in 2009. In 2012 he was the SDP’s candidate for mayor and won in the second round, becoming the 71st mayor of Split. He served until his resignation in March 2017 after his budget proposals were rejected by the city council.
In 2016 the SDP leadership dissolved the Split branch, and Baldasar was expelled from the party. He then teamed up with Milan Bandić’s Bandić Milan 365 party and later formed his own party, The Split Party, in 2017.
In 2014 he attended a ceremony for a monument to the 9th Battalion of the Croatian Defence Forces, which sparked controversy over symbols associated with the past. Baldasar defended his attendance, saying he wanted to move past historical tensions.
Ahead of the 2013 referendum on defining marriage as between a man and a woman, Baldasar urged people to vote against the change.
In the 2016 parliamentary elections he received only 303 votes. In December 2016 Split’s city council rejected his budget. In February 2017 he formed The Split Party and planned another bid for mayor. On March 28, 2017, he resigned as mayor after his proposals were voted down. In the 2017 local elections, The Split Party won 239 votes for the city council, and Baldasar finished last in the mayoral race with 553 votes.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:51 (CET).