Croatian elections 2016 – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Croatia: “Horton hears a Who” or “The Mouse that ROARED”

Connor Vlakancic
A US Senate hopeful
Photo: hr.n1info.com

Guest post

Croatia: “Horton hears a Who” or “The Mouse that ROARED”.
An epitaph of Croatian politics-as-Usual

by Connor Vlakancic – 2nd generation Croatian-American in Zagreb

Horton hears a Who is the story about an elephant with very large ears that he could hear peoples voices of a civilization so small as a dust speck.

What of Croatian civilization and how loud the voice of its people? Is the Croatian proletariat simple minor meager squeaks of mouses or major mighty ROAR of a national legion of Lions? Planet Earth global politico has very small ears, how loud will Croatian voters ROAR on Sunday – September 11th, 2016?

Here is preview of what could be world-wide headlines on the day after Croatian voters raise their collective voices.

12 September 2016 – dateline! Croatia: “The Mouse that ROARED” is the story of a very small country that challenged the United States for global supremacy.

Croatian SABOR (Parliament) election results stuns all the world’s democracies with its bellow of voters voices exceeding any other countries elections. Croatian SABOR elections greatly exceeds all expectations with such a voter ROAR that challenges The United States voters to achieve an equal percentage of voters at the election ballot box on Tuesday – November 8th, 2016.

Modern Croatia exploded onto the world stage with the international collapse of Communism. Yugoslavia government, long floundering for many reasons, disintegrated like all erosion’s reap upon forms of political heresy deprivations of natural human freedoms. Yet, Yugoslavia had provided a predictable existence. Even in its distant past – some say – that its people flourished. Certainly some did … a great many did not and their stories collectively simmered until the pot boiled over and Croatia, in all its heritage, bloomed like flowers in springtime. However, these flowers have withered and it is NOW time for Croatia to jump from the seeds that all Croatian freedom fighters have planted and nurtured with their sacrificed blood.

The price that beloved Croatian proletariat paid, all the inhuman suffering and social injustices – before the Homeland War and now many years after – bring the Croatian collective civilization to a chasm separating the “left side” and the “right side”. Since modern Croatia became a sovereign nation on 8 October 1991, voters have only known to be collectively suffering on one of the two chasm sides.

Great was the surprise on 8 November, 2015 (and dismay of HDZ and SDP intelligentsia that this election would be a “breakdown of its work”), that the Croatian peoples arose to no longer be subdued by the supposedly noble and meritorious stewardship of Croatia by one or the other of these two political parties.

The election was denounced and demonized by international political “experts”.

Yet, the emergence of a bridge over Croatia’s political chasm was not so much a disaster as it was an evolution of a national collective conclusion that bitter political segregation is not working for Croatia. That SABOR election was a surprise. Now, in this coming SABOR election “deliberately do it on purpose”.

Sunday, 11 September 2016. An angry and bewildered Croatian proletariat voter, feeling powerless, concludes: “I will not vote! I will show my anger by staying home! I don’t know which side to vote for! I raise my voice! Vote for Croatia!

Vote for Croatia! “Right, Left or Middle is NOT what is critical in this SABOR election. Every vote, however cast, is the voice of Croatians NOW to newly nurture the seeds that Croatian freedom fighters planted for all Croatians.

During all these past years of Croatia’s independence, that the SABOR parliament has not totally eradicated every law of communist times illuminates that a “breakdown of its work” would be an improvement in its function.

Remember when Zoran Milanovic and Ivo Josipovic declared the Presidential election to be held on Sunday, 28 December 2014. What could possibly be more so stagnant communist legacy than a Croatian election between Christmas and New Year. A pox on such mindset!

As the US Senator-Illinois Independent candidate, on 8th November 2016, with achieving my import of Croatian beers to the Croatian-American diaspora in Chicagoland, I envisioned my campaign to achieve in the US Congress (435 Members) House of Representatives, 100 Democrats, 100 Republicans and 35 nonpartisan Independent Representatives. I look for a political bridge in SABOR to lead Croatia and all Croatians into genuine democracy and thereby show US American voters how: Of the People – By the People – For the People can finally return to America for all Americans.

A strong Croatia SABOR bridge could prove to be the vanguard political Shot-Heard-Round-The-World to launch the new world 3rd Millennium social justice. B+B=B : Beliefs + Believers = Behavior : VOTE to Make it So in Croatia!

Left: Zoran Milanovic, Social Democrats
Photo: Ivica Galovic/Pixsell

The League of Communists that changed its name to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and had held government in Croatia a couple of times since 2000, including 2011-2015, is at this current election campaigning time ahead of September 11 poll pushing down harder on the tail of pursuits for the prosecution of communist crimes committed by Yugoslav communists and Partisans during and after WWII. It was expected, one could say, that strong pressure to stop any further prosecutions of communist crimes after the German court convicted August 2016 to 40 years imprisonment former Yugoslav communist secret police (UDBA) operatives Zdravko Mustac and Josip Perkovic for their role in murder of Croatian national Stjepan Djurekovic.

But what Croatia’s Social Democrats and the leftist coalition are serving to the nation at this moment is a downright filthy betrayal of human justice and painfully reminiscent of the former totalitarian regime practices.

On Friday 19 August 2016, only a couple of weeks after the German court’s findings against former communist secret police operatives SDP’s president Zoran Milanovic called at an election rally of his National Coalition in Slavonski Brod for the termination of division within the Croatian society, and said that “the story of 1941, the UDBA – is over“.

“We must finally realise that the story of ’41, of UDBA is over, we had enough. What’s done is done. Let’s all look at ourselves in the mirror. But with that we will not move a single step, that only stops us. And our competitors, I emphasise competitors, not enemies in the business, earnings or in wealth look at each other as we ‘spit’ and gnaw at each other. They laugh at us and say ‘these people do not know what to do with themselves’. There is a coalition that knows what to do with itself, and which is not haunted by ghosts past and that does not indulge in the healing of personal and other complexes of a political opponent but wants an impact of ideas, ” Milanovic said in Slavonski Brod, Vecernji List reports.

These words come from a hard-core former communist who did not move a little finger in the fight for Croatia’s independence in 1990’s and from the man who desperately tried to avoid or delay the extradition to Germany of the two convicted in Germany UDBA operatives; he had succeeded at this briefly by rushing in a law in Croatia that would prevent extradition from Croatia for any crime committed prior to 2000. Thankfully his ugly deed was overturned.

These words rudely remind us of standards of thought and memory imposed by the former Yugoslav communist regime and here we are, in 2016, having to listen to Milanovic calling the shots as to whether the nation should pursue justice for communist crimes of the past pr not. Utterly deplorable!

When the conviction and the findings against Mustac and Perkovic by the German court were published Milanovic did his utmost to pin Perkovic as a person of 1990’s HDZ/Croatian Democratic Union and Croatia’s first president Franjo Tudjman and attempted to cast aspersions against them.

As the successor of the Communist Party, SDP keeps the remaining UDBA archives, and Milanovic finds himself in an awkward position if the murderous and oppressive UDBA past becomes a loud trend in current general elections campaigns. He was associated with the criminal and totalitarian communist regime and its UDBA archives undoubtedly contain much much more about individuals who had committed, or participated in communist crimes and ruthlessly cruel communist purges. Furthermore. Today’s Croatian society is made up of numerous immediate family members of the former UDBA operatives and this very fact would surely be a potent factor for Milanovic and his echelons to try and stop any further steps in the prosecution or unearthing of communist crimes. Further prosecutions and “pokings” into the archives is likely to unearth that not only did individual communists commit crimes of murder or participation in murder, false imprisonment and forced people of different political persuasion to flee abroad but it may well unearth the fact that these communists were also the ones who robbed Croatia and its assets blind.

Front (R) Stjepan Mesic with rest of
leftist coalition ready to
deny the truth of communist crimes
Photo: Hina/ Dario GRZELJ/ dag

This is surely the reason why Zoran Milanovic had decided to resurrect from political retirement the biggest and the most oppressive communist crimes apologist Croatia had ever had the misfortune of having to deal with – the retired former President of Croatia Stjepan Mesic. Stjepan Mesic has been placed as candidate for Croatian Parliament on SDP’s National coalition list. Resurrecting Stejepan Mesic from political retirement is a statement that strongly suggests that these communists will employ every weapon and tool possible in making sure there is no further court findings like those from the German court against Mustac and Perkovic.

These communists must be stopped in their tracks to prevent justice for the victims of communist crimes just as anyone must be stopped in trying to prevent justice for victims of crimes committed under other totalitarian regimes during and after WWII.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Centre)
Photo: Benny Gool/ onyx media

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the former chairman of the South African TRC/Truth and Reconciliation Commission, successfully argued that in reckoning with the crimes and injustices of the past regimes, truth telling and the reformations of the people’s moral and political values are indispensable to national reconciliation. He particularly argued that forgiveness can play an important role in the moral and political reconstruction of society characterised by division, distrust and enmity… “the process of forgiveness also requires acknowledgement on the part of the perpetrator that they have committed an offence,” Archbishop Tutu said.

Sadly, Croatia’s Zoran Milanovic at the helm of the renewed push to forget about past communist crimes also indicates that there is absolutely no will from the former communists to seek forgiveness for communist crimes; such a brave move would inevitably mean that former communists were indeed, and as historical facts hold, accountable and responsible for perhaps worse crimes than those they’re happy accusing the WWII Ustashe regime in Croatia under Ante Pavelic for.

HDZ – Croatian Democratic Union
with leader Andrej Plenkovic (Centre)
Have a great slogan in
2016 elections: “With Veracity”
Photo: Kristina Stedul/Pixsell

So, the psychology behind Zoran Milanovic’s and People’s Coalition election campaigning when it comes to communist crimes and communist totalitarian regime of former Yugoslavia is blatantly primitive, most difficult to metabolise but rather very transparent. But as such it must not be accepted as “OK”. This psychology may indeed be a useful sign for positive progress with truth only if picked up on by other major political parties such as HDZ or other coalitions currently in the play for a win of government. What Milanovic proposes is continued darkness for Croatia, which follows the lack of light directed at the truth and justice. The darkness affects not only political life but also economic prospects because, contrary to what Milanovic promotes, continued lack of reckoning with the truth of the past feeds continued political and moral divisions in the society and, hence, discourages investments and economic developments. One cannot simply shut the door on the terrible past and move on as Milanovic and former communists insist – the pain of victims will remain loud as long as the truth of the crimes remains covered up. The whole world except Croatia’s former communists seems to know that. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)