The People's Party (Croatian: Narodna Stranka), often referred to merely as Narodna, is a Croatian left-wing nationalist political party founded in 1951 by Croatian partisans and which is referred to as the "natural governing party of Croatia." The party, which started out as an explicitly nationalist party, is today a nationalist social democratic party that serves as a catch-all party for the Croatian mainstream left. In 1968, a rightist faction of the original Narodna broke off to form the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). Today, Narodna and the HDZ are the major contemporary center-left and center-right political parties of Croatia, both of which are nationalist in nature, in opposition to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDS), which is a centrist, non-nationalist liberal party governing i