Illiberal Democracy – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Croatia: In The Throes Of Threat Of Illiberal Democracy

Dr Franjo Tudjman
Ushers Croatia Out Of Communism – 1991
Photo: http://www.franjotudjman.hr

November 2019 marked the 30^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. While for Germany it meant reunification of the country, for communist countries in Europe it meant fall of communism, fall of totalitarian regime, was imminent. For Croats living abroad at the time who pined for democracy and freedom, who fled communist Yugoslavia due to political oppression that made living in Yugoslavia virtually a harsh battle for mere survival and even life-threatening the fall of the Berlin Wall echoed with real prospects for Croatia’s independence from Yugoslavia. Sweeter echoes could not have reached their ears and hearts and minds.

Personally, my greatest hope was for Croats living in Croatia and those living outside it to experience freedom. The freedom experienced by people living in full democracies laced richly with opportunities for advancing own life and pursuit of individual expression without fear of reprisals that threaten one’s existence and progress in life. My greatest concern, though, was to experience the brutality of power, and in general, of human nature once harsh communist operatives and pro-Yugoslavia apparatchiks start feeling the heat of rejection.

I recall three key moments from that time. Reading Croatian press published in the diaspora with Dr Franjo Tudjman (the first president of independent modern Croatia) writing about real possibilities of seizing the moment (of the fall of Berlin Wall) and going head-on together with Croatian diaspora in the move to establish a free and independent Croatia. Formation of multiple political parties in Croatia and first multi-party election to form the new Parliament in 1990 after 45 years of communist Yugoslavia totalitarian rule. The independence or secession from Yugoslavia referendum in May 1991 and the phone calls I received from Croatia which all in sweet excitement said words to the effect: “it’s all going to be alright; Croatia will be independent.”

My response was always – I fear all is not going to be alright; the communists are a wild, brutal lot and will not relinquish their power just because 94% of voters voted “Yes” to independence at the referendum. And so, all was not alright – Serb and Yugoslav Army onslaught against Croatia unleashed a horrific war of aggression in Croatia, murderous taking of tens of thousands of lives, ethnic cleansing of Croats from one third of Croatian territory, vicious destruction of Croatian homes, religious and cultural buildings and property.

My biggest hope was that Croatia would adopt the Western democratic values. That Croatian youth will have the same opportunities to advance in life as our children living in the West had.

Thirty years on and Croatia in independent and a member state of the European Union. Democracy seems to have won, but recent political developments and revival of nostalgia for the former communist rule indicate a path towards illiberal democracy. Former communists, or their kin, sit is chairs of power; mainstream media is controlled by those who continue smothering Croatian patriotism and love for Croatian people. One of the biggest challenges to democracy today is posed by the dramatic change in the political-party landscape. Attention understandably has focused on the rise of a variety of populist candidates and movements, but what has enabled their rise is the drastic decline in support for the parties that had long dominated the political scene. Without grossly exaggerating, one can say that for decades the modal configuration of Croatia’s political systems has featured strong centre-left and centre-right parties or coalitions that support the basic principles and institutions of liberal democracy but compete with each other in regard to a variety of specific issues within this larger framework. Current public recriminations that both centre-left and centre -right major parties have not delivered on the initial promise of full democracy and are equally guilty of holding tight to the processes and mindset commensurate with former communist regime and undemocratic mindset has particularly clipped the wings of popularity for the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). While left (whether centre or not) had always been seen as an extract from former staunch communist regime, HDZ is increasingly criticised as being the same with its apparent distancing from its original aim, a democratic state of Croatian people. These days virtually every new round of elections indicates that this longstanding pattern of dominance by the centre-left and centre-right is losing its hold.

Today, much of Croatian society is sick. What is worse, a significant part of it refuses to get cured from communist mindset; lustration has not occurred and every mention or attempt to usher in an organised lustration process is quashed or ridiculed. Communist nostalgic keep churning out fairy tales about how good life was in Yugoslavia, forgetting the cruel drop in living standards once Western financial assistance turned the taps off; forgetting the fact that Yugoslavia (and hence Croatia) had some 1300% inflation by 1989, which saw supermarket shelves bare, petrol severely rationed when available, thousands of companies and employers unable to pay wages to its workers for months upon months…

The source of this state of mind, the state of mind that refuses to be cured from communist mindset, seems to be a feeling that Croatia (and other former communist Eastern European countries, indeed) is just a buffer zone between East and West. Croatia, after 30 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall still levitates within parameters where either going forward into full democracy or moving backward into a state-controlled existence are possible. The vocabulary of totalitarianism is creeping back unnoticed, which is incredibly dangerous, and Croatia needs to revitalise and maintain with strong resolve the positions it reached in defending the idea of freedom and democracy it fought for in the Homeland War of 1990’s.

This requires a lot of efforts today.

The people of Croatia live in frustration. Victims and culprits became one. The people who have power are those who got rich during the communist Yugoslavia rule and those who got rich during the wild years of privatisation in the 1990s. The corruption and nepotism are still prevalent and the political will of the ruling castes to well and truly rid Croatia of this plague does not exist or is not visible at all. Former agents of the Yugoslav Secret Police (UDBA) are embedded at every level and avenue of society, people representing the former communist power are arrogant and their arrogance stifles progress to painful levels. The loss of Croatian identity is alarming; politicians on the path to preserving and strengthening that identity are mocked, to say the least.

The majority of politicians and people behave as if 1989 [the year marking the fall of communism) never happened. The majority of politicians and people behave as if the European Union had not recently condemned communism as a criminal regime of the past! The “comrades from the party” are attempting to build capitalism with a socialist face: it is the victory of the chosen ones, who operate outside the rules of competition and open tenders. They discard as frivolous the profound and selfless sacrifice for Croatia that Homeland War veterans made.

Judging from public mood expressed via mainstream, non-mainstream and social media, Croatian people are contemplating an essential question: do they want an open full democracy or a closed society, freedom of expression or censorship, rule of law or a new form of authoritarianism. This question cries for articulation, but who will be the brave one to ask it? Certainly, it seems that none of the Presidential candidates currently vying for the high office will ask that question publicly. With Presidential elections due on 22 December this year, it appears most candidates are playing it “safe”; casting their voter-catch net widely. Campaigns are riddled with confusing or unclear messages, with generalised catchphrases promising “something” must change in Croatia (e.g. the slogan of one of strong candidates “Now or Never”) but none are clearly saying what that “something” is and how exactly they aim to change things, even though that “something” gnaws at the bones of most. Given the real danger of illiberal democracy in Croatia and public mood of frustration or impatience for a better future that elections slogan “Now or Never” is a phrase that many Croats attach to the urgent need for lustration/decommunisation and full democratisation. But the bitter scent whiffed by apparent lack of needed “political machinery” and practical mechanisms disappoints deeply. Ina Vukic

Which Way Croatia: Liberal or Illiberal Democracy?

Front: Tomislav Karamarko, HDZ president
Back: Milijan Brkic, HDZ Deputy-president
Photo: Goran Stanzl/PIXSELL

Next week seems set to shed light as to whether Croatia’s Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic has indeed been a weak Prime Minister, failing to adequately implement the needed reforms that were promised to the voters of Croatia at last elections, late 2015, and whether he has, as Croatian Democratic Union/HDZ claims, been more preoccupied with his own political niche and agenda that is in contradiction with the technocratic, professional role (towards implementing set reforms) he was appointed as Prime Minister to pursue.

Croatian parliament will, during the coming week, entertain the subject of HDZ’s (Croatian Democratic Union/ majority party in coalition government) motion for vote of no confidence against Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic and Oreskovic will, as announced, step before it in an effort to defend himself. Hence, the end appears nigh for the current lot of tortuous speculations, allegations against specific members of Croatian government and endless sensationalism served by the media. Next week, then, is likely to deliver some reprieve to the confused, angered and tortured public. Furthermore, the Croatian independent authority deliberating on whether there had been a conflict of interest to pin against Tomislav Karamarko, leader of HDZ and the First Deputy Prime Minister, has announced it would publish its findings around noon Wednesday 15 June.

Hopefully, then, next week is likely to shed some further directional light as to the source/s of the staged political crisis Croatia has been exposed to ever since February 2016 or earlier when vicious attacks began against HDZ’s ministers and leaders.

Many Croats in Croatia and probably all Croats living in the diaspora had, as they fought and supported Croatia’s efforts to secede from communist Yugoslavia and grow into an independent democratic state, did so in the expectation that Croatian democracy would be modeled on the so-called Western democracy:

• On Liberal democracy that protects the rights of the individual and has those rights generally enshrined in the law;
• On Liberal democracy that defends and increases civil liberties against the encroachment of governments, institutions and powerful forces in society;
• On Liberal democracy that restricts or regulates government intervention in political, economic and moral matters affecting the citizenry;
• On Liberal democracy that increases the scope for religious, political and intellectual freedom of citizens;
• On Liberal democracy that questions the demands made by vested interest groups seeking special privileges;
• On Liberal democracy that develops a society open to talent and which rewards citizens on merit, rather than on rank, privilege or status;
• On Liberal democracy that frames rules that maximise the well-being of all or most citizens.

Indeed, on 30 May 1990, at the inaugural assembly of the Croatian Parliament, Croatia’s first president Franjo Tudjman said: “The new Constitution of Croatia must be free from all ideological dissents; it must be based on experiences of creating a Croatian state and in the spirit of the most democratic traditions of modern Europe and North American reality and science of law.”

This month. 25th June 2016 will mark 25 years since Croatian parliament voted for secession from communist Yugoslavia and thus, put in place the Liberal democracy its 1990 referendum sealed as its future path. Croatians have always considered themselves as being more Central European in culture and geography than being Balkan. Hence, the democracy they voted for, by a staggering 94% vote, in the 1990 referendum, was a Liberal one modeled on the “West” rather than some hybrid of democracy which could amount to an Illiberal one; the one reminiscent of government or significant elites’ controls they experienced under communist regime in Yugoslavia.

Tihomir Oreskovic
Croatia’s Prime Minister
Photo: Marko Lukunic/Pixsell

The Financial Times’ recent article by Tony Barber widened my concerns about the slow and communist heritage stifled direction of democratic development in Croatia. Comparing the efforts signaled in 1990 for a Liberal democracy to the current and staged political crisis in Croatia one may indeed ask as to whether the crisis is associated with some political push to move Croatia further away from Liberal and closer to an Illiberal democracy, which has been taking hold of Poland, Hungary and perhaps Slovakia in Eastern Europe? Illiberal democracy “means a type of government that preserves the forms of democracy but falls well short of North American or Western European standards of freedom.”
So far Croatia has struggled in achieving the standards of Liberal democracy but the witch-hunt against individual HDZ members of the government and the feeling one gets that the Social Democrat opposition and its coalition as well as the Prime Minister appear to ignore and even downplay the individual’s right to a defense and due process against alarming allegations does make one question whether in fact there is a background truth in the thought that Illiberal democracy may indeed be at Croatia’s door, if it already hasn’t permeated in. One’s suspicions of this are ever more strengthened by the fact that the Catholic publication “Glas Concila” published 12 June a political commentary by priest Ivan Miklenic, Editor in Chief of that publication, which includes the following: “When the affair ‘the consultant’ (meaning HDZ’s leader’s wife’s consultancy business dealings with Hungarian MOL company prior to him being elected into current government) broke out in public and when it became more than clear that regardless of whether there was guilt under the law or responsibility, moral and political responsibilities unquestionably arose and instead of making moves that serve real common good came the moves that meant the saving of only one man (meaning Tomislav Karamarko, leader of HDZ) at all costs, at all high costs. There was no inclination nor will in the largest political party for the acceptance, the understanding and the realization of common sense reasoning in accordance to which neither a political party, or the Government, or Croatia cannot be a hostage to the interests of one person or one project… The question why the strongest political party, that has large merits for the creation of independent Croatia, is suddenly becoming incapable of recognising what it is that serves the common good, serves Croatian interests and what brings down that party and damages Croatia is likely to remain unanswered once again…”

Regretfully, it appears that this priest, the Chief Editor of the Catholic Glas Concila publication does not consider the rights of individuals as legitimate, as the most important rights Liberal democracy must uphold! This individual the above Glas Concila article refers to is indeed a member of the political party in government but in the eyes of the public he is still an individual with rights to due process that are same as the rights of individuals not in government. Indeed, to my view, the individuals in government must uphold and fight for the rights of individuals (including self) under any and all circumstances otherwise the door to illiberal democracy is wide open. How close reported Opus Dei activists in Croatia who are said to be among advisors to the Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic (e.g, formerly New York based Stjepo Bartulica) are associated with this appalling commentary in the Catholic Glas Concila is anyone’s guess, but certainly the guessing game does become easier once matters of possible influence are placed in the context of Liberal versus Illiberal democracy; the latter being considered as acting against rights of individuals and promoting pressure from political or other elite groups.

Zdravko Maric
Croatia’s Finance Minister
Photo: hrt.hr

If we look deeply into the fight Karamarko and HDZ are fighting right now it certainly is not about some conservative nationalism one sees in Poland, Hungary or Slovakia but it is more about individual rights as the cornerstone of Liberal democracy Croatia lost rivers of blood for in the 1990’s Homeland War. Those rights are of Croatia’s national interests and not some nebulous national rights those attacking HDZ and Karamarko are spitting out daily. Indeed, the faith in HDZ as a guardian of the cornerstone of Liberal democracy appears further justified by the fact that the party has Saturday 11 June decided to put forth Zdravko Maric, current finance minister, as the next Prime Minister of Croatia, hence demonstrating that its fight in the political crisis has not been about one individual’s position – Karamarko’s – but about the principles of individual rights and due process. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)