Split, the Vanquished City

AIM Zagreb, May 15, 2001

"You can be certain, this administration will not allow the extremists who made themselves heard in Split take over command of the country", said Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan at a recent press conference, obviously doing his best to sound convincing. When speaking of Ivica Racan, everything will just be lip-service, because for fifteen months already for as long as he is in power, he has not even peeped into Split, the second biggest city in the country, the city which is evidently on the verge of explosion and splitting along the seams and in which everything is going downwards except the swelling rightism, extreme nationalism and the crudest violence. In the city which Racan has so successfully avoided in the past fifteen months, there were, for example, two brutal stadium conflicts of the members of Torcide and police special forces which then spilt onto city streets and which - all things considered - had political motivation; it was in Split that roads leading into the city were blocked and a mass gathering of support to general Mirko Norac was held on the waterfront; Stipe Mesic was bashed here in the military barracks at Dracevac; there was a gathering of support to the rightists from Slobodna Dalmacija, and indeed, for fifteen months the phenomenon of Slobodna Dalmacija itself took place as a continuous civilisational scandal; gatherings of Condic's forces also took place in this city where they sang songs such as: "Oh, Ivica (Racan) and Stipan (Mesic), black crows will eat you up" and where journalists of Feral (Tribune) were appropriately spitted on...

Defenders' headquarters, centres of HIP and certain degraded generals who are unitedly engaged in producing extremism, hatred and violence, could not have found a better testing range for giving vent to their instincts than Split, the city which was during ten past years diligently transformed into a military stronghold full of highly incendiary “material”. This “material” had come from all over Croatia - from Capljina to Livno, from Drnis to Imotski - and then colonised in Split according to plan in order to artificially and forcibly change the population of the "red city". In Tudjman's time Split, therefore, operated as a testing range for collection of debts for war and patriotic merits and this mostly meant taking possession of housing units by the “deserving” ones. The people who used to fight in southern battlegrounds or in Herzegovina (or did not fight in the war at all but were engaged in espionage) were awarded flats in Split. They got flats in two ways: either after eviction of the ineligible tenants and taking possession of the flats the owners of which had left the city, or the state constructed flats for deserving warriors or those who proclaimed themselves warriors.

According to the data of non-governmental organisations in Split, 280 cases of illegal evictions were registered in this city, but these are just the cases when the damaged persons tried to seek justice, that is, when the evicted lodged complaints with the prosecutor's office. It is assumed, however, that only every third evicted person reported about it: a part of those who were forcibly thrown out of their flats have left Croatia without even trying to test the readiness of the judiciary to protect their rights, and a part learnt the hard way how inefficient a legal state may be. It is well known that certain prosecutors in Split persistently dissuaded the evicted from the intention to prosecute the usurpers by telling them that their "biggest problem was that they were married to a Serb" or suggested to them that there was "no sense in instigating proceedings, because their case would never be resolved anyway".

According to relevant estimates, in the beginning of the nineties in Split about ten thousand former army flats were usurped. These flats, whose owners had left the city, automatically became the property of the Ministry of Defence, and then Susak's Ministry gave them to deserving volunteers. That is how Split was "ennobled" with about thirty thousand tenants of pure Croat breed, and in this operation of creation of the defenders' fort which was expected to serve as a source of all rightist flows in the country, its protagonists did not shrink from even the most notorious violation of law: the fact that testifies this is that all the deserving ones who had got hold of their housing units either by eviction or by usurping empty flats, quickly received papers for them from the Ministry of Defence. A large majority of those who received the decisions on the use of housing units were promptly enabled to buy these flats, but under privileged conditions, of course.

“Split is probably the city where the division between a large number of the poor and a small number of the rich is the most evident; here the frustrations are also the most evident of former warriors who believe that their military victories have not been adequately compensated for, and there is also the clash between the Mediterranean cultural model with the typical Dinaric rugged rural culture. But I don't quite agree with those who reduce the whole problem to the matter of culture and non-culture: this is primarily the matter of a policy pursued by somebody, in an organised manner, which has its institutional network, which knows what it strives for and which is very dangerous. One can just say that such a policy relies on a certain type of culture and that it produces a certain pattern of political behavior, the one which is founded on animosity", said sociologist Srdjan Vrcan in Split Feral Tribune.

Except for colonising the warriors who are for obvious reasons loyal to the former regime to the end - Split has become the centre of the extreme right thanks to expressed opportunism of the ruling city coalitions. While the opportunism and vacillation and procrastination of Social Democratic Party (SDP) can to a certain extent be explained by proverbial calculating attitude of Racan's party, local organisation of Croat Social Liberal Party (HSLS) largely consists of the people who confirm that Budisa's party is a continuation of Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) but with different means. Along with Ante Nakic, prominent member of the local HSLS who vociferously supports action of Condic's headquarters for protection of the dignity of the homeland war, there is also Ivica Bota, assistant minister in the ministry of Radimir Cacic, author of the legendary declaration that he would forcibly break the memorial plaque put up to honour the city liberators (in the Second World War) if someone dares put it back. The plaque had been “temporarily” removed by the leadership headed by Nikola Grabic and it was recently put back with an addition: the plaque devoted to the liberators of the city in the latest war. The memorial devoted to the foundation of the first Italian partisan battalion called “Garibaldi” which used to be at the front of the Bishop's Palace fared much worse: it was removed and never put back.

The city administration had for years ignored the demands for the change of the name of Mile Budak street, and it was changed only after the change of the regime: until then members of SDP and HSLS explained that “changing of the name of this street would just bring points to HDZ diplomacy”. Silent alliance of mayor Ivica Skaric with the extreme rightists was corroborated by his speech at the gathering of support to general Mirko Norac at the waterfront, by his appearance at the gathering for Slobodna Dalmacija, his several times stated stand that he had “better cooperation with HDZ regime than with this one”... Skaric was, in fact, just slightly less openly a sponsor of rightist parties than Branimir Luksic, district prefect of Split and Dalmacija. The mayor's inclination towards those who advocate crude nationalism and hatred was perhaps best expressed in the case of Slobodna Dalmacija when he openly sided with Ivic and Jovic. He was not alone in this because his party colleague Miroslav Bulicic, deputy mayor of Split, had allegedly invested maximum efforts in the past months to provide paper for undisturbed printing of Slobodna Dalmacija.

“The policy of the current Croatian authorities starts from the conviction that consistent breaking with the heritage of Tudjmanism produces crisis, instead to think the other way round. Indeed, the failure to do with it for good – the hesitation and readiness of the authorities to compromise – undoubtedly produces crisis. If we take this point of view, Split is just an example which most vividly illustrates the current crisis of Croatian politics”, Vrcan claims.

The end of the story of Split – the city which has about 25 thousand unemployed persons and in which every third citizen lost his/her job during the nineties – belongs to the Catholic Church whose most prominent representatives in this region in the past fifteen years unanimously supported exreme rightist and nationalistic ideals: from Archbishop Frane Franic who in his public appearances paid tribute to Ustashe commander Ivo Rojnica, Archbishop Ante Juric, to the current Archbishop Marin Barisic who publicly expressed support to the masses that protested in support of Mirko Norac and who – together with his assistants is the severest opposition to Zagreb Archbishop Josip Bozanic. It is therefore quite justified to end this article with the Catholic Church, because its dignitaries are certainly the most competent to give the city which is lying on its deathbed the anointing of the sick and immediately afterwards – to administer the last rites.

Ivica Djikic

(AIM)