Croatia: Covid Pandemic Keeps The Nation Divided

This Christmas is the second in a row since the Covid’19n pandemic was announced and I wish you all a blessed Christmas and a happy New Year with the hope that we all get at least a little bit of the warmth of togetherness of family and friendship love during the season.  

Now, well into the end of the second year since the World Health Organisation declared that the Covid-19 outbreak in China had become a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) (January 2020), the Coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt the planet with multiple uncertainties, just as it disrupts Croatia. It has been a turbulent and uncertain journey with new variants emerging to seemingly unexpected new outbreaks raging, and multiple new vaccines developed, but their delivery uneven. Uneven because vaccine supplies were as such and uneven because the pro- and anti-vaccination and pandemic measures surges exploded like hurricanes, bringing third, fourth and now fifth waves of the pandemic…impoverishing many families both spiritually and economically.

Covid-19 vaccines have been increasingly looked to as the holy grail to provide the most promising efficient and effective means of putting the pandemic behind us—especially given the lack of effective treatment against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Whichever way one looks at it from the perspective of numbers of well-educated, well-armed scientists the science across the world is clear: Covid-19 vaccines are a safe and effective way to prevent serious illness, hospitalisation and death from the coronavirus, and vaccine mandates, particularly around employment and travel, are considered by governments an effective tool in promoting widespread vaccinations. Vaccine mandates have led to the emergence of vaccine nationalism whereby the governments introduce control measures that often rub many people wrongly and, hence, vicious disagreements with these measures develop. Croatia is a relatively small country of around 4 million people, but it is experiencing high rates of deaths from or with Covid; the number of these deaths will surpass 12,000 by the beginning of next week. And that is huge for a relatively small country.

 Clearly, the traditional nationalistic reaction was in fact common to all countries as soon as it became necessary to create public response policies to the pandemic, even if this was done with varying degrees of modesty and countries differed in the “severity” of measures and restrictions vis-à-vis the traditional freedom of movement rights people consider as entitlement. The Covid-19 crisis caused nationalistic practices to erupt almost everywhere: “wars” over masks, tests, vaccines, travel, vaccination certificates. All over the world, national withdrawal was proposed as an emergency solution, triggering the closure of borders at rates and in ways that were specific to individual nations, even when they belonged to the Schengen area of the EU.

Perhaps because it is a relatively small country Croatia’s divided population of the perceived benefits of vaccination, on the usefulness of control measures that are meant to stop or minimise the spread of infections are more visible and felt than in a bigger country. This often leaves the impression that the public mood in Croatia is largely that of bitterness and anger, which are often displaced and thus lead to lack of vision or confidence for the future.

Those looking at rejecting the government measures and lobbying against vaccination have in Croatia, as elsewhere in the world, adopted a warlike nationalistic narrative that can often, on individual bases, emerge as cruel insults to persons who hold differing views regarding Covid measures, in particular.  This aspect of public reactions to the pandemic evidently has to do with some ideological incarnations of contemporary nationalism and points to the national-populist variant that has little to do with the original nationalism, which emancipated from absolutism and imperial, colonial, or totalitarian regime control. Whatever it may be, this national-populist approach in Croatia is more likely than not responsible for a poor picture of health in Croatia when that health is measured by the number of people receiving Covid-19 vaccination. As in many countries across the world the social media in and from Croatia is riddled with anti-vaccination related messages, information and misinformation, and personal vicious attacks and insults against those who think differently.  Levels of vaccination are alarmingly low in Croatia; nationally about 51% of adult population is fully vaccinated at this stage.

It is becoming more and more apparent that in Croatia those standing against vaccination and against various measures such as vaccine mandates are concentrated among the various political parties in opposition, particularly those leaning to the conservative or right-winged patriotic political orientation, e.g., Croatian Sovereignists (Hrvatski suverenisti), Patriotic Movement (Domovinski pokret), various Croatian Party of Rights echelons (Hrvatska stranka prava), BRIDGE/MOST etc. Hence the opinions regarding Covid -19 pandemic, and its management have in Croatia become a political tool that evidently seeks nothing more except gaining favour among and winning votes from them at the next parliamentary elections. It is in my view most sad that all these political parties in the government opposition while protesting against government’s handling of the pandemic fail to explain how they would control the spread of the virus if they won government.

The determination to hold onto a particular opinion in Croatia among political parties can best be seen from incidents that occurred last week when a well-known politician, Member of Parliament for the Croatian Sovereignists, Hrvoje Zekanovic, openly accused the right-wing and other unvaccinated politicians (who are against vaccination) of being guilty of spreading the infection and sending people to hospitals.

“You are responsible – people are not vaccinated because of you. You speak against covid vaccine certificates. Vaccination should not be treated as a footnote. I wonder how those who visit prayer communities and pilgrims will confess, explain why someone on a respirator suffers and only because they trusted Facebook more than common sense,” Zekanovic said in the Croatian Parliament on 9 December 2021.

For these words Zekanovic is being ousted from the political party Croatian Sovereigninsts where he was a leader and indeed a most significant founder. He is apparently being accused of having spoken against the party lines and views on Covid-19 vaccination and measures to do with the pandemic control. And this comes from the political party whose senior members have often expressed criticism against people who follow the government’s advice for vaccination! Croatian Sovereignists have through this case proven that they do not stand for the independence and sovereignty they preach. If they did then they would not act so viciously against Mr Zekanovic. After all. Every political party that seeks to win elections must be seen to support both sides of the Covid-19 war – those for and those against vaccination and measures because the voters themselves, the public for whom the country exists is made up of people on both sides of the argument.   

Furthermore, one shudders in disgust at the raft of individual insults and awfully cruel comments about Zekanovic that have filled the social media. Just because he expressed his personal view regarding pro-Covid-19 vaccination!  I reckon that no decent human being could bear even thinking about let alone express such hatred and ridicule against another human being and fellow citizen.

From the above incidents it has become blatantly clearer than ever before that Croatia is bitterly divided onto two camps. Quashing the pandemic with a majority consensus in one or the other approach is looking more and more unlikely by the day.  

A comical thing one comes across in Croatia these days is that the pro-vaccination people are labelled globalist and blind followers of an ideology as if the anti-vaccination people are also not following a global movement against vaccination and pandemic measures, which also, if one likes, forms an ideology!   The pro and anti-vax movements, like many other issues that have emerged during the pandemic, serves as a stark reminder that our society’s public sphere is fundamentally broken. The long yet essential process of fixing it will require all of us, as responsible citizens, and media users, to work collaboratively on restoring public conversation mechanisms. But while you have politicians that are blind to one side of the argument coming from the people and not to the other, while there is no conversation between the two sides, while insults and vitriolic exchanges continue between the two sides, the politics of selfish pursuit of positions or bums on chairs in parliament will surely continue at the very detriment of the nation and, perhaps, towards a more physical conflict. Ina Vukic