CRIME AND HOW TO USE IT

AIM Zagreb, February 4, 1996

We will grab criminals by the throat - one of the leaders of the HDZ right faction, Vladimir Seks, announced a few days ago. This threat was uttered as part of the loudest campaign the ruling party in Croatia has ever initiated against robbery, embezzlement of state-owned money, etc. The campaign was annouced not long ago, in the typical manner of a party state, as the decision about it was reached by the Presidency of the HDZ.

The statement issued on the occasion included a great deal of railing against "Mafiocracy", but hardly anything could be heard about investigative, judiciary and other agencies which are usually entrusted to take care of crime. At the very beginning, it was already quite easy to grasp that the motives for the operation were less in a systematic and elaborated struggle against crime, but more, if not only, in the deteriorating reception of the ruling HDZ. The public increasingly considers it to be as a party of skillful and enterprising men who have used privatization of socialistic property to stuff into their own and pockets of their proteges in the economy everything of any value that was to be found on the table of power. This is especially true in the environments where there was much to be found, such as Zagreb, and where due to that, or primarily due to that, three months ago, the HDZ badly lost local elections.

Reasons for the anti-criminal campaign are, therefore, primarily of a political nature. Nevertheless, though, it cannot be waged only by political means, so it was necessary to find an appropriate medium through which it could be conducted. It was found in the report of the State Auditing Service established (also after the initiative of the HDZ) in spring 1993, which is right now coming up with findings on operation of state, public and other services in 1994 and starting to process data on 1995. Auditing revealed a pitiful situation in these services, including ministries, most of which were dealing with trading, service-rendering and other firms without public competition obligatory for finding the most convenient tender. Some of them kept large amounts of unspent money in banks, instead of using them for what they had been allocated for or returning them into the budget. It was also revealed that state officials were extended large loans - amounting to even 200 thousand German marks - which they have been returning at an exceptionally low interest rate and in instalments of a several kunas a month.

When the auditing report was discussed by the Assembly, Vladimir Seks triumphantly declared that the HDZ showed in the best way how false claims were that the ruling party was concealing and participating in crime. On the contrary, this party would be the one to lead the struggle for unblemished accounts in the country! It was an utterly ridiculous event - the HDZ criticizing its own state and state administration, as if they had been created in vacuum, and as if the fuming public could swallow that those who steal can at the same time be successful thief-hunters. Nevertheless, according to reactions of the opposition, it could be seen that it had received this demagogical manoeuvre of the HDZ with quite a lot of restlessness and bewilderment, which was obvious from the stance which it took in relation to the findings of the auditors. A part of the opposition demanded immediate dismissal of ministers responsible for such a wretched situation, and also to have the "books" of President Tudjman included by auditing (which was obviously an attempt to deprive the HDZ of its potentially dangerous toy, which was, of course, rejected by the assembly majority). The other part of the opposition decided to lie low, demanding that the bad situation in state agencies be treated with less passions and arbitrary accusations.

Fear of the opposition that the HDZ could just pretend to strike against crime in order to divert attention from the problem which is really bothering it proved to be justified at the very session which was expected to discuss discharge of the director of Television Ivan Parac and nomination of the new director. Parac was criticized lately in the newspapers for having carelessly and squanderingly spent enormous television money, but he appeared in the Assembly, without having consulting anyone, and submitted a report which was in fact his violent counter-attack. He accused his predecessor, Antun Vrdoljak, until recently a favourite of President Tudjman, for irresponsible - between the lines even worse - toying with millions of Television money, for he had a custom of giving them to other firms with no compensation, and among the enterprises which constructed something for Television, he had always happened to choose the most expensive ones. The Report resembled excitingly formulated charges not only against Vrdoljak but the entire ruling structure (due to which Parac allegedly lost the post of the ambassador in Belgrade which had been already promised to him), which is acting as a drunken millionaire at the time of general poverty, for many even plain misery. Having seen this, with a weak pretext that the director was not authorized to report to the Assembly, the HDZ withdrew this hot document, having previously proclaimed that it was "illegal".

Due to the clamorous, abusive quarrel between Parac and Vrdoljak, even the Presidency of the HDZ met and reprimanded Parac for the self-willed performance in the Assembly, and both of them for the polemics which is allegedly below democratic tradition of the ruling party. It was, however, clear that this was a split of much larger proportions, more precisely, that this was a continuation of a process against which the leadership of the party had already warned its membership. Namely, about a fortnight ago, "Slobodna Dalmacija" carried a strange text, a humorous sketch, in which two members of the HDZ, a highly loyal one and a highly shaken one, spoke about thefts in the society which the top echelons of the authorities were also involved in. A series of current and former state officials were mentioned in the text: Nikica Valentic, Hrvoje Sarinic, Jure Radic, Nadan Vidosevic, Branko Miksa, Ivan Parac... For the first time, a journal controlled by the HDZ dared mention members of Tudjman's immediate family. His daughter Nevenka and grand-son Dejan were mentioned, both rich upstarts in the accelerated Croat capitalism.

Josip Jovic, Editor-in-Chief of "Slobodna Dalmacija" was discharged of duty immediately after publication of the humorous piece. Not such a long time ago, he was considered as one of the most pampered favourites of President Tudjman and his party, and now he was sufficiently considerate and loyal not to wish to give away the author of the delicate humoresque (the name printed underneath the text was unknown to any of the journalists). It is rumoured, though, that Vladimir Seks himself stands behind the humoresque, that he ordered the text, and perhaps even wrote it. That is why it sounded perfectly naive when the Presidency of the HDZ afterwards seriously warned the newspapers and journalists not to produce and instigate conflicts of factions within the ruling party. Namely, it was obvious that a battle between the already formed, quite some time ago, factions in the party had begun, and that both sides had engaged the most powerful ideological arms in it. Technocratic, conditionally speaking, left faction of the HDZ accused the party right that with its headlong hue and cry against "new capitalists" it actually advocated a primitive concept of isolationism of Croatia. The right, again, chose "men from the former system" to be the target of their criticism, who had allegedly infiltrated the ranks of the HDZ in 1991 and 1992 and were nowadays imposing the concept of making money instead of building the Croat state.

The circle around Tudjman responded with a strong ideological cannonade, with a vocabulary closer to the right than to the left faction, which does not necessarily mean that they have unreservedly sided with them. Deputy Head of Tudjman's Office, Mrs. Vesna Skare Ozbolt, announced a great purge within the bureaucratic structures of "remnants of socialism and the old age". The purge would begin in a month or two, and it would allegedly include the HDZ itself. Allegedly, because this is just a rerun of a series of former conflicts in the party which have never had any significant impact, although watching from the side, the impression was that they were in fact spectacular settling of accounts.

Tudjman whose name was for the first time dragged into the conflict, not only in rumours in party lobbies, but in public as well, will probably take the position between the two factions in order to weaken and control both. And what about the struggle against crime? Another topic will eventgually emerge and push this into oblivion!

MARINKO CULIC