With almost all the votes counted, Croatia’s Electoral Commission has announced that Ivo Josipovic, the centre-left candidate who fought on a platform of fighting corruption, had won the first round of Croatia's presidential elections yesterday, but now faces a January 10 run-off against a right-leaning populist.

The Commission stated that Josipovic had gained 32,4% of the vote, with runner-up Milan Bandic, the controversial mayor of Zagreb, gaining 14,8% of the vote, thereby edging out Andrija Hebrang of the governing Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), who polled just over 12%.

The country now faces a run-off vote on January 10, as no candidate received the 50% plus one vote required to declare outright victory.

The failure of the ruling conservative party member, Andrija Hebrang, to make it to the run off appeared to indicate the country's growing dissatisfaction with the government's handling of economic decline and allegations of high-level corruption.

Some 4,4 million people, including more than 400 000 living abroad, mostly ethnic Croats in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, were eligible to vote in Sunday's election. Turnout, however, was lower than in the previous presidential elections held in 2005, election officials stated as the polls closed.

The incumbent president, popular centrist Stipe Mesic, 75, will stand down in February after serving the maximum two five-year terms.

He is widely credited with having helped to transform the former Yugoslav republic from a nationalist autocracy - the legacy of the late Franjo Tudjman - into a parliamentary democracy, while curbing the president's powers.

The winner of the January run-off, with a five-year term until 2015, will be expected to hold the influential office as the former Yugoslav republic joins the European Union. Croatia joined Nato in 2009 and could enter the EU as soon as 2012.