EXTORTED PATCHING UP OF THE STATE POLICY

AIM, ZAGREB, March 11, 1997

Approximately a month before the local elections and elections for the District Chamber of the Parliament, the atmosphere in Croatia is rather moderate - more quiet than noisy - and the interest of the voters the same. The number of undecided is extremely high - according to some estimates, as much as one half - although, as the elections are approaching, the army of those who are in two minds what to do with their votes has somewhat decreased.

Although the election campaign is only in its first third, it is rather probable that the situation will not change much in the future, and the lack of true excitements could be explained that no one - not the ruling party, not the opposition, and as evident, neither the voters - wants them. Some weeks ago in his regular annual report on the "state of the nation" to the Parliament, Tudjman said that the forthcoming elections will not decide the main thing, and that is who will have the state power. Thereby, he bluntly made it known that it was the only thing that always interested him, although this time the dismissal of the local elections positively contains some degree of pretense. After his party convincingly lost the elections in Zagreb two years ago, spreading a fever all over the country by refusing to accept that defeat, Tudjman would certainly like to avoid a new loss, at least in the capital, but in case it nonetheless happens - wants to relativise that failure.

As far as the opposition is concerned, it had already won supremacy at the local level at the last 1993 elections - on account of which Tudjman's authorities hastily changed the laws so as to divest local government and self-government bodies of power - and is now entering new elections with good prospects of repeating that once more. But, after a split in the opposition ranks regarding the fundamental objective at the forthcoming elections - to dethrone HDZ or to let it drown by itself and satisfy itself with a gradual rise to the top - local elections no longer seem so much important to the opposition parties either. The conviction has prevailed that the existing structure of power cannot be changed by 1999 when the elections for a far more important - Chamber of Representatives of the Parliament - are to be held.

This assessment makes everyone even more sure that Tudjman will have no serious contender at the presidential elections which will follow the local ones, perhaps already in two months. The only thing that a candidate to be put up by the opposition, such as Budisa, Tomac or Tomic (Gotovac and Mesic have already been officially nominated, but have no chance of seriously threatening the favourite), could possibly achieve is to get in the second electoral round. However, as none of the abovementioned has decided to run, and probably will not, as they are more inclined to miss these elections, convinced that the new, extraordinary elections will have to be called (the official state and medical reports have not yet recognized Tudjman's illness, but he himself said the most about it when in his interview to the CNN he avoided giving an explicitly negative answer when asked whether he was terminally ill).

This waiting for the biological law to determine the future pyramid of power is the only thing that can be discerned as some sort of the opposition's electoral "strategy" (which can backfire at it as the electorate may punish it for such calculations by abstaining from elections in large numbers, and it is known from earlier experience that such "voting" suits HDZ most). Raising of dust with these elections doesn't suit Tudjman's party either, as that could recreate the atmosphere from the time of Zagreb protests late last year, that these elections are "to be or not to be" for the present authorities.

Still, the ruling party cannot allow itself to totally deaden these elections. In contrast to the enormous effort exerted at avoiding this, it is running for these elections alone or in coalition with irrelevant (the Croatian Christian-Democratic Union) or cloned parties (the Croatian Party of the Right) and only at the local level. The absence of large coalitions with the leading opposition parties, who have been invited to cooperate not long before the elections (HSLS, HSS), will not only be reflected in less votes on which the HDZ could count in advance, but will bring another, equally bad, perhaps even worse headache. It can sense that the radical option will not sell so easily as it did at the previous elections, and perhaps that is why it had put such high hopes on coalition partners.

These should have played a role of ideological cushions which would protect the flanks of conservative and rigid HDZ and make it more attractive to voters, especially in cities, where it had started loosing ground already three years ago at the last local elections. When the combinations with the coalition did not come true, HDZ had to urgently start improving its own facade in order to get closer to the expectations of voters, who as it is assumed, will be in favour of parties of the "classical center" (which both the HDZ and the HSLS-HSS coalition are, all of a sudden, pretending to be). In other words, such a front which will shift the emphasis from the "state issues", which have been insisted upon for years until the national-pathetic delirium caught the majority of the population, and drag into open the long forgotten problems of salaries, social care, illegal accumulation of wealth, etc.

In that context a number of minister have been pushed forward whom the public thought to be industrious and with relative morality, but politically colourless, even intimately anti-HDZ, state officials, such as Davor Stern, Ljerka Mintas-Hodak, Miroslav Separovic, etc. (all, or the majority of whom have been sent to the Zagreb electoral front where Tudjman wants to avoid new defeat at all costs). At the same time a certain number of radicals and extremists, such as Tomislav Mercep, have been removed from the electoral lists, and in all likelihood, the arrests of the most prominent Herzegovinian hawks, in the first place of Mladen Naletilic-Tuto, are a part of the pre-election re-design. In order to avoid an imbalance and as a counter-balance to "anaemic" HDZ members from the Government, a number of officers of the Croatian Army (HV), have been nominated again, among which is the present Chief of HV General-Staff Pavao Miljavac, as well as his predecessor, recently retired General Zvonimir Cervenko.

However, care was taken for that army support to be politically carefully measured this time, because the mentioned and other officers are not from the circle of radical HDZ party ranks, but it is not by accident that Cervenko had recently condemned the excessive behaviour of some HV officers and even stated that only the army subordinated to the elected civil authorities could count on joining the Partnership for Peace, i.e. NATO. This warning acquires its full meaning in the light of the fact that shots were for the first time fired at the North - Atlantic Pact units recently in Mostar, which can be compared to the adventure with tying of the IFOR soldiers for bridge fences and electric poles, which proved lethal for Karadzic.

If that analogy were fully applicable, then Tudjman would risk even greater embarrassment than Milosevic did at one time, as he would jump out of the already rounded and completed Washington - Dayton system, forcing the States and its western allies to either unwillingly embark upon a new peace odyssey or to abandon it in revolt. In that light Tudjman's pre-election manoeuvres resemble very much the doubly extorted - from within and without - patching up of holes in the Croatian state policy, as well as of the party in power itself. And, if it is extorted there is no reason to believe that this is fundamental and lasting reorientation of Tudjman's internal and external policy. However, that requires somewhat more tangible and convincing proof.

MARINKO CULIC