Is Parliamentarism in Croatia Dying Out

AIM Zagreb, 14 November, 1998

Parliamentary crisis has knocked at the door of the assembly of the Republic of Croatia. The seed of the crisis in the assembly hall of Croatian parliament was sown by deputies of six opposition parties who submitted resignations from all posts they had held in the assembly and from membership in all assembly commissions, international delegations and institutions in which they represented the assembly. They kept only their deputies' mandates. By doing this, the six opposition parties additionally pressured the ruling Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) primarily in order to oppose the intensified marginalisation of the parliament, but also in order to try to force president Tudjman and the HDZ to schedule early elections instead of regular ones which, according to timetable, should not take place before the end of next year.

The immediate cause of resignations of six opposition party deputies (Social Democratic Party, Croatian Social Liberal Party, Liberal Party, Croat Peasants' Party, Istrian Democratic Union and Croat National Party) was the refusal of the HDZ deputies to have Croatian Television carry in a live coverage the parliamentary debate on the so-called SIS scandal, although this is customary when topics of major public interest are discussed. The discussion on the agenda concerned the initiative of the six parties from the opposition for establishment of a special parliamentary investigative commission which would examine whether allegations were true of a few until recently close associates of Tudjman and high officials of the HDZ, who claimed that the rightist faction of the HDZ was abusing secret services in settling accounts with their political opponents.

Hrvoje Sarinic who was until recently the head of president Tudjman's office, and Franjo Greguric, Tudjman's advisor on Bosnia and Herzegovina publicly accused another Tudjman's advisor and vice president of the HDZ Ivic Pasalic of having, along with the head of military intelligence service Markica Rebic and tycoon Miroslav Kutla, systematically harangued them in media owned and influenced by Kutla, primarily in the weekly Imperial, by using information, half-information and disinformation collected and produced by the Security Information Service (SIS) of the Ministry of Defence of Croatia. Their accusations were reinforced by resignation of defence minister Andrija Hebrang, who simultaneously with Sarinic's and Greguric's public accusations of the powerful and radical faction of the HDZ deeply rooted in the organisation of the defence ministry and Croatian army, withdrew from the post after several-month long unsuccessful attempts to bring about some changes in the defence ministry.

Not even Tudjman himself could disregard such serious accusations which were arriving from the very heart of the HDZ authorities. He ordered an internal party investigation which ended with the declaration that there had been no abuse of secret services in Croatia, and according to the already well-established rule in the HDZ, Sarinic, Greguric and Hebrang were forced to step down from their posts. That would have been the end of it, if six opposition parties had not demanded parliamentary debate about the SIS scandal. They first forced the ruling party to agree to a session of the Internal Policy and National Security Commission, where four key protagonists of the scandal (Sarinic, Greguric, Pasalic and Rebic) stated their respective arguments, but with no documents and reports on investigation carried out after Tudjman's order by the office on national security, the top organization of all Croatian secret services. Protesting against ignoring of the parliamentary commission which is, pursuant the Constitution, in charge of supervision and control of security services, the opposition members of the Commission submitted their resignations, and their parties in the Chamber of Representatives initiated a demand for establishment of a special parliamentary investigative commission which would independently shed some light on the SIS scandal.

To the opposition, the SIS scandal popped up as a chance to open the Pandora's box of the HDZ regime, because although Sarinic and Greguric spoke only about a part of the abuse of secret services and their scheming in the media, it was possible to discern the contours of the whole system of rule of the HDZ from their interviews. Revealing of the mechanism by means of which a group of political power wielders under auspices of Tudjman used secret services and certain hybrid tycoons to preserve and reproduce their power, would almost inevitably lead to revealing the truth about their illegal and uninstitutional secret connections with certain government departments and state funds which have the power of decision-making about almost all resources of Croatia. Tudjman and the HDZ had absolutely no intention of permitting such a denouement of the SIS scandal. Moreover, they did their best to prevent live TV coverage even of the assembly discussion on the proposal of the opposition for establishment of the investigative commission, because they were aware that even in such a limited discussion the oppositionists would probably say things which would make the increasingly marred image of Tudjman's regime even uglier.

But, this time, contrary to the past years when the HDZ ran the show with its comfortable majority in the parliament and the opposition played according to its dictate and rules, six opposition parties have gone one step further and with their resignations introduced a period of extremely difficult operation, if not even complete blockade, of the parliament. At first, the HDZ tried to strike back by offering the vacant posts to deputies of ethnic minorities and those from the block of rightist parties which are close to it and in fact its disguised coalition partners. However, deputies of ethnic minorities rejected the offer of the HDZ, and a part of them, in solidarity with the six opposition parties, also submitted resignations to membership in assembly commissions. Only pronounced rightists remained, but they too are hesitating to accept the offer because they are aware that open cooperation with the HDZ is not fashionable nowadays and that in the next elections they might pay dearly for it.

Neither Tudjman nor the HDZ feel comfortable for having been pushed into a situation in which they can maintain the illusion of parliamentarism only by collaboration with Djapic's neo-Ustashe and a few minor rightist parties. If for no other reason, because such political marriage is almost identical to Milosevic's coalition with neo-Chetnik Seselj's Radicals in Serbia, and this is not at all popular in European and other associations which Croatia would very much like to become a full-fledged member of. Probably this is the reason why Tudjman and the HDZ have decided to strain relations with six opposition parties, trying to divert at least some of them from the by now quite smoothly running oppositionist cooperation and persuade them to take sides with them.

They have tried to do this in the same manner in which they are ruling Croatia - forcibly, arrogantly and authoritatively, accusing the opposition six that they are acting like internal enemies, and that they are trying to unstable Croatia in conspiracy with international institutions which have like for who knows how many times before demanded again that Tudjman's regime start to really respect democratic standards of the developed world. Presidency of the HDZ literally concludes that "there is no doubt that attempts to cause a political crisis and tensions in Croatian society are along the line of those well known actions of certain political and international circles which have never accepted the existence of the Croatian state." By qualifying six opposition parties as state traitors, that is, almost the entire opposition since these are the most powerful opposition parties, the HDZ is manifesting nervousness, but also that, for fear of loss of power, it is ready to reach out for any means, even for radical polarization of Croatian society.

Contrary to past years, this time leaders of the opposition did not knuckle down. Moreover, stands of the presidency of the HDZ are additional reasons for their assessment that the HDZ is leading Croatia to ruin, and that the only solution would be scheduling early elections. They are convinced that if they ran in the elections together they would win, as they won recently in the regional elections in the district of Dubrovnik-Neretva. They announced that they would respond to additional pressure exerted by HDZ by making new moves in the assembly, and that if relations in the parliament did not change for the better, that their deputies would definitely leave the assembly. Should that happen, they would not return until new elections. In this way they would completely expose the rule of Tudjman's HDZ. They are convinced that this would just be a formal expression of its single-party essence, since in all the past years, the parliament has served the HDZ just as a democratic decoration, without any real influence on developments in Croatia.

It is questionable, however, whether even if the opposition left the assembly, it would force Tudjman to schedule early elections, because he is aware that in the current economic and social crisis in which one third of the population in Croatia is living on the verge or below the threshold of poverty, his party has little chance to win against the united opposition. By buying time, Tudjman and the HDZ will try to preserve power for as long as possible, and by assaults on the six opposition parties it will do everything in its power to turn them against each other and thus increase its chances for another election victory. By the decision to radicalise the parliamentary crisis, Tudjman and the HDZ have stepped on the path which may lead to a situation in which power may start rolling down the street and then force and repression may very easily decide in whose hands it will end up. Probably that is why they are so resolutely rejecting the possibility of scheduling early elections, because they have plenty of force and repressive instruments, while in a democratic denoument of the crisis they would most probably be forced to give up power which they love so dearly.

Zoran Daskalovic

(AIM)