political crisis in Croatia – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Croatia: Roll Up Roll Up – Political Circus Still In Town

President Zoran Milanovic (L) Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic (R)

The circus is still in town!

Its tapestry is tragic, widespread political despair and divisions.

Roll up, roll up, ladies and gentlemen, open up your wallets and come and see the biggest show in town. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Grab a ringside seat while they last.

See the fearless Andrej Plenkovic and intrepid Zoran Milanovic high wire double act. Hold your breath as Andrej tries to keep his balance while Zoran vigorously shakes the wires and – vice versa. They both defy gravity, somehow keep their grip. How many days can they stay up on the wire? Will they fall and tumble to the ground? There is no safety net. Or is there? They are both very experienced at mudslinging, offloading own incompetence and biases to keep walking the wire of power.

Croatia has been in a political crisis ever since the former communists grabbed power in 2000. And the crisis is turning into a political circus unseen anywhere else and painful to watch. Prime Minister against the President, the President against the Prime Minister.

But there are times when one needs to step back and see that some things the President says are the things many in Croatia think but dare not say. The issue is here will the President follow his statements and ensure that changes needed are put in place or will all this talk be just another round of empty rhetoric that brings scores on the proverbial daily political points popularity chart.

Zoran Milanovic appears to be increasingly positioning himself as shooting from the hip, straight-talking man of the people and appears to have lost all caution in choosing words to highlight problems Croatian people are having both in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina with regards to the 1990’s Homeland War and war of Serb aggression. He is certainly overshadowing the Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic whose patriotic phrases, if they by some seeming accident roll off his tongue, are laboured and insincere. Milanovic has picked up on a significant anti-government mood in Croatia that has become highly politically inflammable and the feeling that anti-government mood with his daily comments and statements keep the media and the public wondering where all that will end. Whether President Milanovic will do a backflip on his current public appearances that in some aspects give overdue credence to the values of the Croatian Homeland War is yet to be seen. He has done backflips before.

There is a significant anti Covid-19 vaccination movement in Croatia and vaccination levels are relatively very low even in this fourth pandemic wave with thousands of new cases every day and dozens of deaths from or with Covid. Picking up on this “anti- vaxxer” movement Milanovic burrowed his way into the public heart, and often in seems that public has forgotten that Milanovic stands for every painful anti-Croat breath communist Yugoslavia has ever made. President Milanovic has for many weeks now been criticising the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, accusing it of imposing repressive restrictions on the people, regardless of the fact that Croatia’s measures are in fact not among the strictest in the European Union. Milanovic has supported Covid-19 vaccinations but the fact that he is scathing various elements of Covid-19 measures such as wearing face masks for the vaccinated, the Certificates of Vaccination or Covid passes or the powers that the Civil Protection Board that brings the decisions related to Covid measures there is no doubt that vaccination levels are low because of the daily circus that goes on every day between the Prime Minister and the President.

Zoran Milanović, gave a statement to the media during this week and severely attacked Milorad Pupovac (One of Members of Croatian Parliament representing Serb Minority and leading activist in Croatia denying Serb aggression and genocide over Croats) and the representative of the Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina Sefik Dzaferovic for whom Milanovic said was a “UDBa activist from Zenica” (communist Yugoslavia Secret Services activist)…

Such an attack is both politically and morally justified for a great many Croatians in both Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and it is high time someone so high on power ladder has brought it into the public arena.

“We hear in Parliament from Milorad Pupovac, Andrej Plekovic’s coalition partner (who was also my coalition partner five or six years ago) that the Croatian army committed ethnic cleansing at the beginning of the war and after the war. Things like that bother me. I was in Srb in 2008, I never saw Pupovac come to Bacin, where 70 elderly Croats were murdered in 1991, to Promin, where 40 people were killed in mid-1993… He is a man without any moral principles. He is like a jukebox, the more you insert five kuna coins, 25 kuna, the more you get.

But I see Sefik Dzaferovic, a sponsor of the mujahedin in Kakanj (Bosnia and Herzegovina), coming to Vukovar to provoke Serbs. He does not come out of reverence for Croats because he calls those same Croats and their country war criminals. That is the problem, and we will talk about it,” Milanovic said.

“Then Mr. Bakir Izetbegovic, who incited that UDBa operative from Zenica against me, called. There are always people who will shout at me, but people spit on Croatia. So then Bakir tells me that I should think a little more. I think and I have an attitude…

“No one will shut my mouth, not only me but not a single well-meaning man. I will always fight against manipulators and petty souls. The only thing they have in common is that they like to implant and parasitize, including the team from Sarajevo and Mr. Pupovac, who dishes out lessons on morality with everyone, but acts like a jukebox. The more you put in, the more you have. A man without any principles, moral and political “, said Milanović.

“I receive 80% of Croatian Serb vote, there are ten thousand of them, I have a right to say something about what bothers us…where are the war veterans now, to defend the people from Pupovac, where is the HDZ community of war veterans now … immoral people for whom the truth means nothing, who are corrupted because they have secured a job in government companies, who are paid for not working … and they easily walk over the insults that Croatia had committed ethnic cleansing, Knin was not ethnically cleansed, people fled from Knin and then 30% returned to Croatia…”he said, reiterating that Milorad Pupovac was playing dirty.

Incitement of chaos in Croatia has become a political circus and its main performers are the Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and President Zoran Milanovic. While Kolinda Grabar-KItarovic was President of Croatia similar circus played out between the Prime Minister and President and Grabar-Kitarovic had often said in public that she has had no success in establishing a good working relationship with the Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and his government.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic keeps replying to some of President Milanovic statements, however his replies are an act of composure and seriousness one couldn’t metabolise even with huge blobs of the softest butter. He just does not seem sincere, and he has never pulled Milorad Pupovac over for his insulting threats and innuendoes against Croatian war veterans who defended Croatia from Serb aggression. Plenkovic has often said in public that the truth of Croatian Homeland War and its righteousness are not disputable but he keeps keeping close company in government coalition with the Serb minority that constantly criminalises that war, that constantly reeks of hatred for Croatian victory over Serb aggression in that war so, really, one cannot take Plenkovic as truly meaning his own words that the War truth is indisputable.

He has never acted on his words and defended that truth in front of the Serb aggressive lobby within his own parliament. What a travesty of justice towards own people and independence built on the foundations of that war!

This is a tragic reality for Croatia.

This time around though the difference is that this President, Zoran Milanovic, is not even complaining about the lack of good working relationship with the Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. Milanovic appears focused on specific matters that may uplift values of the Homeland War, place Serb aggression where it belongs, do away with the cruel Serb-led equalisation of victim and aggressor, prop the Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina to avoid the threat of being removed as one of three constitutional people and treated as an ethnic minority by the Bosniaks (Muslims).

Or – the political circus in Croatia may linger in town for quite some time. Ina Vukic

Averting Yet Another Collapse Of Croatian Government

Croatian Prime Minister
Andrej Plenkovic
Photo: Damjen Tadic/ Hanza media

When upon my return from Croatia a few weeks ago I wrote about my observations on the state of the country one thing that rattled me a great deal was the extent to which the threatening bankruptcy of one private company (Agrokor) was shaking-up the whole country. Subsequently, Croatia was faced with an almost unprecedented, possibly ill-conceived move by the government to rush in new legislation that would enable it to take over the administration of the same company. Be that new law as it may, the Agrokor affair has created a monster that has reeled everyone into a storm of political possibilities and impossibilities.

As the phenomenon of turbulence would have it a rush of new wind either intensifies or stops devastation. The public revelation few days ago that Croatia’s finance minister Zdravko Maric is Agrokor’s former Executive Director for Strategy and Capital had sent the wheels of political winds into a wild spin, threatening the collapse of the government.

Presently, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic is making last-ditch attempts to save the country’s government from collapsing second time in six months after sacking three ministers from its government coalition MOST (Bridge coalition of independent lists) partner amidst their, as well as MOST’s parliament speaker Bozo Petrov’s insistence that minister Maric could no longer enjoy parliament’s confidence and must go. They allege that Maric was in the know about the appalling financial situation in Agrokor and may have contributed to the threatening bankruptcy while working in Agrokor and Prime Minister Plenkovic stands firmly behind his finance minister, prepared for an all-out political combustion that may swallow his government into the cavern of no return. Ministers summarily dismissed/sacked are Interior Minister Vlaho Orepic, Justice Minister Ante Sprlje and Environment and Energy Minister Slaven Dobrovic. But, these sacked ministers are digging their heels in and refusing to go quietly – spurred on undoubtedly by their MOST leader Bozo Petrov who – wrongly to my view – insists that Prime Minister has no powers to sack ministers and that such sacking is tantamount to breaches of the constitutional order.

It needs to be said that the current Croatian Democratic Union/HDZ led government was constructed on sharp and deep fault lines that include coalition with the MOST whose political currents had trailed a path of seeking reforms on basis of criticising the HDZ majority rather than putting forth concrete submissions for reforms through camaraderie and reasonable compromise if need be. Furthermore, MOST and its leader Petrov were instrumental in the bringing down of Croatia’s former government in June 2016. So, the current Government was always going to be susceptible to dramatic shifts in the political landscape particularly if one considers the real possibility that MOST and Petrov are about bringing instability to Croatia – a reminder of the way UDBA/ Yugoslav secret service operated and still operates even if Yugoslavia has ceased to exist more than a quarter of a century ago.

Whether the aftershocks of the current political crisis in Croatia will cause the government to collapse is yet to be seen, but one expects that Prime Minister Plenkovic will do the utmost in his power and knowhow to avoid it. It’s too early to say whether the parliament will render a vote of no confidence in finance minister Maric driven by Petrov, but even if it does a collapse of government does not necessarily follow.

Amidst current trade-offs and talks to avoid a government collapse indications are that any new HDZ’s minority government and its stability will depend on whether similar fault lines to the ones that are currently causing epic tremours appear in new coalitions away from MOST. Given the political leanings on the scene the players in a new refurbished government may come from an available political mosaic of smaller parties such as HNS (Croatian People’s Party) and perhaps the unpredictable HSS (Croatian Peasant Party), some lone political party such as Milorad Pupovac from SDSS/Independent Democratic Serb Party as well as the independent members of parliament.

The prospect of Milorad Pupovac from the Serb party entering into a new government coalition is, frankly, frightening and utterly destructive. The overwhelming sentiment among the Croatian people is that a Serb associated with still unresolved condemnation of Serb aggression against Croatia in 1990’s that had as one of its tasks to stop the creation of an independent Croatia should not be in government. This sentiment is completely justified in this era when Croatia must turn a page and start living as a truly independent Croatian state that gives no leverage of success to any undermining coming particularly from Serb leaders, who are more loyal to Serbia than to Croatia.

Should HNS/Croatian People’s Party be the one to boost the government’s survival prospects then one would expect that its former president Vesna Pusic retracts her past statements in which she falsely and maliciously accused Croatia of aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1990’s. Otherwise, any coalition between HDZ and HNS forming a government will be poisoned by Pusic’s extraordinarily evil statement. HDZ is the late president Franjo Tudjman’s party, it is the party that victory and Croatian independence are indebted to – a political marriage between that party and the party that still houses Pusic is unthinkable without Pusic’s public retraction of her vicious and false statement about aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina; and without her public apology.

If alliance between HDZ and HNS ensues without resolving the Pusic statement then this is likely to be a scenario when civil unrest becomes really dangerous. That would be the time when everything begins to get truly confusing and crazy. It will defeat a great deal of needed and possible reforms and ensure a crash and burning of political and economic climate starting in 2018.

An unthinkable prospect of Social Democratic Party/SDP forming alliances with view to forming a new government, thus avoiding new and snap general elections sits like a dagger in the chest.

“We will seek new partners to continue the government and ensure political and economic stability,” Prime Minister Plenkovic told reporters in Zagreb. “Should in the next days there be no possibility to form a new parliamentary majority, we are ready for new elections.”

In the 1960’s British Prime Minister Harold Wilson coined the phrase “a week is a long time in politics” and currently in Croatia it feels like an unpleasant, tense eternity. A government collapse at a time when a third option amidst two major parties’ leads has not yet clearly appeared on the horizon as a shoe-in, a certain winner at elections, would spell more of the same and fuel the vicious political circle that has not brought the reforms or changes needed for Croatia. It is at times of collapse that party loyalties become stubborn, no room nor will to look the other way and embrace new political forces even if these may hold the biggest yet promise that Croatia will survive as an independent Croatian state, free, determined and wilful in creating the economic atmosphere for prosperity and well-being. Ina Vukic