Drinking Parties in High Society

AIM Zagreb, June 11, 2001

At the latest meeting of Ivica Racan's government Assistant Culture Minister Miljenko Domjan and Assistant Education Minister Zlatko Milisa were dismissed for a rather unusual reason, at least when Croatia is concerned. Namely, they were both responsible for car accidents they caused while driving under the influence, and resigned believing that the circumstances surrounding the accidents would have negative repercussions. Racan accepted their resignations, saying that by offering to step down the two officials showed they were responsible people.

The dismissal of the two assistant ministers came only a week after another senior state official, the head of Osijek-Baranja county, Marko Bagaric (of the Croatian Democratic Union), near Vinkovci on Croatia's national holiday, caused a car accident driving "in an obviously intoxicated state," as the police report said. To make things worse, Bagaric fled from the site of the crash, driving his government BMW without a license. Police had revoked it shortly before the accident for three months, after he was caught driving in a drunken state!

The story of Marko Bagaric, however, is only the tip of an iceberg when the scandalous behavior, drinking binges and debauchery of high-ranking state officials are in question. All of them – until Racan dismissed the two assistant ministers -- went unscathed.

It is interesting to note that the current head of Osijek-Baranja county, who was appointed to the office after Branimir Glavas resigned, already had a similar traffic accident, while working in the city administration of Djakovo. Driving a state Renault 21 under the influence, he had an accident that caused DM10,000 in damage to the car. Since he was drunk, the insurance company refused to cover the damage, and Bagaric had to do it himself. However, he let the case drag on, hoping that it would be forgotten. Only after he was appointed to his current post and after the opposition brought up the issue, did he pay the debt in several installments, but not the DM5,000 in interest that had meanwhile accumulated.

Djuro Decak, former head of Virovitica-Podravina country and a retired general of the Croatian army, caused a traffic accident on May 16, 1998, at 4 a.m.. He swerved off the Lipovac-Zagreb road at Lubanj, near Vinkovci, also after having several drinks. At the time, he was still head of the county. As opposed to Bagaric, however, he was driving his own Mercedes. The police determined he was drunk, but it is not known whether he was ever taken to court for causing the accident and whether his drivers license was revoked, as required by law.

Decak, however, was not alone in the car, as he publicly claimed. Knowing that this could additionally discredit him and lead to private problems, he did his best to conceal this fact. The person who was in his company, an employee of the Croatian army, at the time of the crash was lightly injured and had to take several days' sick leave.

The long-time deputy speaker of the Croatian Parliament and currently the opposition whip, Vladimir Seks, holds first place when it comes to inappropriate conduct by state officials. All of his trips to Slavonia, a region he was in charge and saw as his fief, regularly ended in scandals. In a published transcript of one of the many conversation between Tudjman and his associates that the late president taped, Vesna Skare Ozbolt told him about one of Seks's drinking parties. She, however, said nothing about a 1993 war-time party in Vinkovci, that is still well remembered in this town, when this senior Croatian Democratic Party official and one of the most powerful people in the country came to attend a ceremony marking the anniversary of the local Fifth Guard Brigade. On the occasion, the otherwise proverbially merry and joyful Seks outdid himself.

The manager of the Vinkovci Nama department store was more than surprised when in the middle of the night he was woken by uniformed people demanding that he open the store and immediately find a suit for Vladimir Seks. The manager was told to unlock the store and find the suit because Seks could not return to Zagreb in the one he was wearing when he arrived in Vinkovci. The deputy speaker then proceeded to change, according to witnesses, in the nearby GEM motel, on the Vinkovci-Nustar road, after which the facility earned the nickname "the Dressing Room."

If that incident can be viewed as a "petty private excess" on Seks's part that harmed no one else but him, another one of his public outbursts can hardly be described in such mild terms. It happened in a village near Osijek, in November, 1999, on the eve of the last parliamentary elections, and after a celebration marking the opening of a village school. While heading back to his car after dinner and many a drink, merry and in his best mood, Seks hurled the bottle he was holding at the costly state vehicle, started to dance and, crotch in hand, yelled: "Come and get it! Come and get it!"

Osijek resident Marija Suk, one of the founders of the Croatian Democratic Union in Slavonia, stunned by what she saw, later gave the Zagreb newspaper Nacional an account of what followed: "When the dancing ended, Seks ordered everybody who was present to line up facing the car, with the women standing in front. We thought he wanted to shake hands with us before leaving. Some twenty or so women did what he asked, with their husbands, neighbors and us, other guests, standing in the back, curious to see what he was going to do next. He approached the woman standing closest to him, once more touched himself and smiling happily shook his hips. He repeated this in front of all the women who stood there, thoroughly perplexed. I glanced at Glavas who was completely sober and watching his colleague's disgracing behavior with alarm. He knew what it meant and that with so many witnesses the scandal could not be hushed up."

This display of sexism by one on the highest Croatian officials of the time, perpetrated in a state of utter drunkenness, went unpunished and the public learned about it only after the change of government in January, 2000.

Officials of the Croatian Democratic Union were involved in such scandals from the very beginning, when they came to power in the first multi-party elections in 1990. One of the most notorious took place in 1991, in Osijek, after a lavish presentation of a book written by Djuro Perica, a well-known political prisoner and one of the party's founders. Although a feast was organized in a hotel, Branimir Glavas, Ivan Bobetko (the son of General Janko Bobetko, who soon thereafter was remembered for throwing a briefcase at a Serb MP in the Croatian Parliament named Tanjga) Petar Sale and several other prominent party officials decided, already quite drunk, to continue partying in Valpovo and Nasice.

Their feast ended in the Glavas family home on the outskirts of Osijek, where Petar Sale was wounded under circumstances that were never clarified. According to a version which circulated immediately after the event, Sale wounded himself accidentally, by carelessly handling his pistol. According to another, however, he was shot by Ivan Bobetko. The official version was that Sale was wounded accidentally when the treasurer of the Croatian Democratic Union unwittingly fired while taking the gun apart.

The police never issued an official announcement, nor was the incident ever investigated. Sale spent some time in the Osijek hospital, and the news media were advised not to mention the case.

Racan's resolve to dismiss the two assistant ministers who damaged the reputation of his government by drunk driving could mean a final split with the inexplicable tolerance for such debauchery by the highest state officials. It would be good if this principled approach were extended to another, more numerous group of officials, who damaged the state by acts of robbery and plunder committed with their minds completely sober.

Drago HEDL

(AIM)