THE ABUSE OF THE POPE

AIM, ZAGREB, September 7, 1994

Only one subject has featured in the Croatian media in the last ten days : the Pope's visit to Croatia. Papers compete in the space they dedicate to this undubitably important event, while TV without fail begins its News with a ten minutes block on the visit of the Holy Father. To put it mildly, all this exceeds the limits of good taste, while the peak of this flood of euphoric propaganda are statements of the Association of the Croatian Secondary School Headmasters and Minister Vesna Girardi-Jurkic, according to which it turns out that the Pope is coming to Croatia, among other things, to resolve disputes between the Government and teachers, who went on strike on Monday, September 5.

At the beginning of this dispute this spring, Cardinal Franjo Kuharic mediated and thanks to him a "pact on social peace " was concluded. Credit for the end of the strike of teachers goes to the first man of the Catholic Church in Croatia, after which the Government undertook to raise their miserable salaries which ranged between DM 200 and 300. The Government promised summarily to propose to Parliament, by September, to raise the pay scale and at least somewhat alleviate the poverty of the teaching staff. But, nothing of that came true; rather what could have been expected happened : even before the school year began 80-90 percent of elementary and 92 percent of secondary schools were on strike, and even many kindergartens were not working. But, how can the Pope help?

According to the secondary school headmasters (appointed by the Ministry of Education and Culture) he can help, as "this is a historic moment for the Croatian people and we shall do everything in our power in the next week to prepare the Croatian youth to welcome the Holy Father in the best possible way. Let us keep all our problems and justified dissatisfaction with the overall state of affairs in Croatian education to ourselves and fill the coming days with happiness and satisfaction for having the greatest friend of all the Croats visit us. Let us be up to this historic moment".

Madame Minister, false master of sciences, Vesna Girardi-Jurkic, one of the most hated personalities in Croatia, joined in this abuse of the type "it is not the right moment", which we have heard many times in the last fifty years, by repeating the same on TV so that everyone would know who was the author of the Headmasters' Appeal, and added a few new "facts" . She claimed that the Government had fulfilled its promises and sent a proposal to Parliament to satisfy the teachers' demands. But, it is not Government's fault that Parliament did not take up this proposal for discussion, and since Croatia is a legal state it is necessary to wait for Parliament to verify or reject the Government's proposal.

This invoking of a legal state sounds almost grotesque in a situation when that same minister is adopting illegal and unconstitutional decisions on imposing taxation on the "Feral Tribune", allegedly because of pornography, and actually, as she admitted later on, because this paper had criticized the authorities.

It sounds ridiculous to invoke a legal state when it is known that that same Minister during the last strike made a decision on the introduction of obligatory work for all teachers in secondary school and student hostels invoking the law and a decree, without mentioning which specific law or regulation she had in mind. That historic act, which will probably make the annals of Croatian legal gems, also contained a provision on its immediate entry into force. According to the law, an order has to be published in the "National Gazette" and enters into force eight days after its publication, at the earliest. In this gem-document Madame Minister even invoked the Law on National Defence, and to make things perfect invited retired professors and senior students to be strike-breakers.

From those same days we also remember the firm stance of the Prime Minister, Nikica Valentic, who claimed that an increase of teachers' wages would endanger the stabilization programme and in turn cause inflation, which could provoke a chain reaction (or action) of other employees, whose wages are paid out from the state budget. Already then the trade unions made an effort to prove the Prime Minister wrong. They calculated that the share of wages in the budget had fallen to 21.6 percent, and that only an additional 4.9% of funds were necessary for the increase of the pay base to 55% of the salaries in the economy, i.e. for a 27.7 percent increase for all the 130,000 employees.

And that could be achieved without much pain, and still keep a surplus in the budget. How? Through an internal redistribution of the budget, by the activation of reserves from the increased resources for salaries and from higher inflows to the budget, as it is being replenished more quickly than expected, as well as by reducing the funds earmarked for protocolary purposes and through monetary instruments . But, the main argument of the trade unions was the fact that the budget was actually much larger in real terms than the Government was willing to admit, as it is expressed in foreign currency at the rate of four kunas to a German mark, which is at the moment by almost 10% more.

And that is where tricky questions arise. First, how can the Government, on the basis of a Parliamentary decision, bring Orders with the force of law, when it did not want to do that when teachers' salaries were in question? What is the Government actually doing with the enormous budget surplus, as it is being replenished more than planned, and with the remaining infamous 10 percent surplus on account on the foreign exchange clause? There is no one in Croatia who can answer this question. All responsible persons, as a rule, respond: please do not ask that.

From the time of the spring strike we also remember a letter of the Independent Trade Union of Science and Secondary Education addressed to the President of the Republic in which, inter alia, they invite him, as a doctor of science and a former Universtity professor to join the strike, and to which he replied that they must have understanding for the hard times Croatia is going through, and that he too had given up the pay he was entitled to, as his contribution to stabilization. And Dr.Tudjman wrote all that at the time when everybody knew all about his plane, the expansion of the presidential palace, investments in his villa which he, in the end, purchased for petty cash, about Brioni, a new yacht...Someone then calculated that only the two flats that Vice President Vladimir Seks and Minister Ivica Mudrinic got as a present from the state would be sufficient to cover the monthly wages of 16,666 teachers.

In such an environment, when both legal and illegal pinching has become the code of conduct, i.e. in a true jungle, the Pope's visit could serve to teach the teachers a lesson in patriotism and historic moments. However, the trade unions would not be taken for a ride and accept the role of traitors, and publicly stated that there would be no strike on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, i.e. during the Pope's stay in Croatia and in the course of the preparations for his arrival, and that students would go back home after his departure. The major Croat trade union - The Association of Independent Trade Unions - in addition to a welcome sent the Pope the following message: Your encyclic "A Man Through Work" is today also for us a source of true knowledge and a lodestar to follow.

And in that same encyclic the Pope clearly presented his social lesson, which is in many ways the opposite of what is now happening and being carried out in Croatia, on which he will surely say something at the large meeting-mass on the Zagreb racetrack.

GOJKO MARINKOVIC