DIVISIONS LEADING TO CIVIL WAR

AIM Zagreb, 1 July, 1997

A true civil war is going on in Croatia, so far, just verbal, but the attempt on the life of oppositionist Vlado Gotovac shows that arms have not been put away too far. In brief, this is the assessment of many independent sources. Political division between supporters of the authorities and the others led to deep mistrust and intolerance between two parts of Croatia. The editor of Tjednik Krsto Cviic writes that in their modern history, the Croats have probably never been so divided and so at daggers drawn like now under the rule of the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ).

The head of the state certainly bears the greatest responsibility for opening of the front inside Croatia. He sees enemies all around him. It is highly ironic that Franjo Tudjman himself had proclaimed reconciliation among the Croats to be one of his main goals. He not only failed to reconcile the dead, but profoundly disunited the living. He revived the conflicts from the past, mostly the tragic Croatian division from the Second World war, but created new gaps, too. All those who do not applaud to him, are persistently labelled as subversive elements, enemies of Croatia by him. He calls them confused and disoriented persons, claims that they are slaves of foreign interests. He surpassed himself when a few days ago he wrote an open letter to president of Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU), Ivan Supek, and established a connection between him and an alleged plan on the attempt on his life as the head of the state. Tudjman appeals on Supek, first, to publicly declare why he has allowed to be used, as he says, by obscure press which wishes for shooting at the president of Croatia. Second, his assessment about acquiring wealth by the new elite, Tudjman's family inclusive, was also assessed by Tudjman as an invitation for assassination.

So far it was possible to believe that continuous sounding of the alarm that the whole world and a big portion of Croatia were involved in a conspiracy against the Croatian president - was a matter of psychology. After the letter to Supek, it is obvious that it is the matter of psychiatry. Novi List from Rijeka concludes that constant obsession - as of late with assassination - with plots of certain domestic and foreign centres, is rapidly becoming a medical and not a political fact. Tudjman draws his conclusions about preparations of an attempt on his life from the fact that Supek's opinion about greedy Croatian authorities in a weekly was printed alongside with a text which the Croatian president understood, as he himself says, an open invitation for his assassination. The text which caused suspicion spoke about the attack against Gotovac, in fact, which, by the way, Tudjman did not care to comment on. In another weekly, Supek's interview was published with the title reading: "We must overthrow this system", which Tudjman connected, as he says, with the notorious photomontage published a few issues later, which he also wrongly, interpreted as an invitation to kill him. Denying assessments about his having acquired great wealth, the Croatian president says that he has nothing but the family house and that the Croatian authorities carried out privatization in the manner useful for millions of Croatian citizens. "Other assessments of these accomplishments of Croatian politics are either in the service of some persons' personal promotion or destabilization of Croatia, and even induce an assassination", Tudjman firmly concludes.

In answer to the public accusation, Supek reminded that for more than half a century he was advocating peace-making and humanism, which, as he said, completely denied any violence, especially things like death penalty and assassinations. Insinuations about alleged involvement in a terrible conspiracy have, the president of HAZU says, "an obvious intention to disqualify me and the other critics of the authorities for talks about essential problems". Supek is not giving up, however. He reminds that many journals have written about the wealth acquired by the president's family and that it has not been denied. He seeks explanation about foreign accounts with the money which arrived from diaspora on them. According to testimonies of Tudjman's former intimate associates who had eventually abandoned him, minister Susak and head of the president's office Sarinic had the right to sign these accounts, along with the head of the state. In the end he concludes that it would be advisable for Tudjman "to move from Tito's castle to Mark's square and continue to rule humbly, as appropriate for a president of war-devastated and poor country".

In his public response, Supek states also that Tudjman's open letter was followed by telephone and verbal threats. He is attacked that he is a traitor, Bolshevik and Serbian godfather, he is threatened with his life. They say: he will be killed before he tries to kill the president. Copies of some of these cursing and hysterical messages were published by some independent journals. They clearly show that Tudjman's accusations did not pass unnoticed. The attack against Gotovac has already shown that the leader's "praetorian guards" were ready to assault anyone they experience as Tudjman's opponents.

The Croatian president is now trying to spread his personal paranoia. His fear of assassination is a signal that he might be aware that his power, by dramatically splitting Croatia into those who have everything and those who have nothing, produces a dangerous conflict. But the letter to Supek is also a signal that the policy - programmed concentration of enormous wealth in the hands of two hundred odd families and pauperization of all the others - will not be changed. Squaring of accounts with thieves was announced from the presidential palace several times, but that was all. The attack against Supek is now announcing that tactics has changed - a vehement assault against those who are pointing out social division of Croatia and corrupt practices of the authorities. The current authorities do not know how to operate without enemies. Somebody has to be guilty for all unresolved problems. The Serbs used to be the guilty party, nowadays it is the international conspiracy together with the domestic fifth column and its supporters.

Fearing of what Croatia is rushing headlong towards in a headlong manner, Cviic proposes that peace be regained, that arms be laid down, that an agreement on ceasefire be signed, and then gradually, as he says, that ideological and political demobilization be proclaimed in order to open the road to normal civilian society in which the right to difference would be self-understood. The problem is that even if he wanted to, Tudjman could not change. An even greater problem is that the only one who can keep the civil war he has initiatied on the verbal level is Tudjman himself.

JELENA LOVRIC