Scandalous Cooperation of the Opposition with the Ruling Party

AIM Zagreb, 25 October, 1999

Although Franjo Tudjman is lately often appearing in public, and this as a rule means that chronicles of his scandalous statements are piling up, Croatian opposition has in the past several days done its best to come close to him, if not even be just as bad. The scandal it arranged occurred in the assembly where eight new judges of the Constitutional Court were elected in a manner which caused a real shock of the public.

The opposition has consented that these eight judges who will replace this number of those whose term in office has expired be elected in agreement with the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ). Each party has retained the right to elect autonomously its candidates (two of them, Social Democrat Ivan Marija and Liberal Jasna Omejec, were nominated by the opposition). Using this provision, HDZ has elected a few highly problematic candidates, primarily the hard-core nationalist Vico Vukojevic. Vukojevic is an open advocate of division of Bosnia & Herzegovina, for a time he used to come to sessions of the assembly in uniform of the Croat Defence Council (HVO), and even within the HDZ he stood out with his irreconcilable and derisive anti-Muslim rhetoric.

There are witnesses who claim, although only in lobbies, that he has personally participated in pogroms of the Muslim population and that he returned from them openly bragging about these belligerent "heroic campaigns". Vukojevic is also the spiritual leader of the assembly commission for investigation of the victims of war and the postwar period which has for years scandalised the public with its open pro-Ustashe postulates and "findings". The latest scandal happened this month when this commission published data that "only" a few thousand people were executed in Jasenovac, and in the whole of Independent State of Croatia (Quisling NDH) just a few hundred Jews with a cynical restriction that the investigations are very attentive and profound and that they will continue for years.

By nominating Vukojevic for the judge of the Constitutional Court, HDZ has probably calculated that in this way it would give the best resort to a half-frantic but still superannuated extremist. Because in the Constitutional Court he will draw less attention than on lists of candidates in the forthcoming parliamentary elections which will as it is include a whole host of obscure faces from the right wing of HDZ. But Vukojevic's nomination provoked a thunderous uproar of revolt in the independent media which fiercely accused the opposition of being ready to share posts even with the most unscrupulous men from the ruling party for the sake of narrow party interests.

That is why the accused made up their minds to make a manoueuvre with which they would avoid the worst disgrace, but not fail what they had agreed with the HDZ. Had they really wished to avoid disgrace, it would have been sufficient for the candidates nominated by the opposition to withdraw their nomination or, had they refused to do it, the proposer could have deprived them of support. Neither has been done, and the only thing the opposition decided to do was that its assembly deputies would not participate in the voting. That is how it happened that the new judges, including the two from the ranks of the opposition, were elected by members of the ruling party only. At the same time, the opposition started publicly vindicating itself that there had been no agreement with the HDZ, and that it had not known that Vukojevic, who is among other quite incompetent for the new job, would be among nominees for judges of the Constitutional Court.

However, Vukojevic's candidacy was a fact known for weeks and even months before and newspapers had extensively written about it, so that these excuses cannot be taken seriously even by the not very well informad part of the public. Those better informed know that before election of new judges, a special constitutional law on the Constitutional Court was passed, and what is especially interesting, by consensus of HDZ and the opposition. In fact that everything was provided for is testified by the fact that this law prescribes that the constitutional judges shall have at least twelve years of experience, exactly as much as one of the mentioned opposition candidates has (Jasna Omejec).

Besides, university professor of law Ivan Padjen accused the opposition that passing of the new law on the Constitutional Court on the eve of the election of new judges was a part of an agreed deal. Indeed, had the old law remained in force, pursuant its provisions, the current assembly would not have had the right to elect new judges, it could have been done by the new parliament which will be constituted after the forthcoming elections. The opposition has, therefore, according to Padjen, made a major concession to HDZ by enabling it to install its own Constitutional Court for a long period of eight years for as long as the term of office of constitutional judges lasts, and exchanged this great privilege with just two seats in the new session of this Court.

As it can be seen, there is more than sufficient evidence that the agreement not only existed, but that despite all the fuss raised about it, it was carried out to the end. That is why the nervous lame excuses of the opposition resemble an aspirin taken in a hopeless attempt to cure a severe attack of bad conscience, but that is not the worst thing about it. For quite some time some of the local analysts have been warning that there are serious indications that the HDZ and the opposition are negotiating about division of power after the elections, and even that the results of the elections have in a way already been agreed. This does not sound like a mere assumption any more, but as a plan realisation of which has already started. What has brought the two parties so close that they are risking such explosive scandals?

Probably the most precise answer is the mutual fear of the elections. However persistently it may be claiming exactly the opposite, HDZ is for the first time afraid of a serious defeat in the elections which would imply a postponed debacle for it, because its power would be reduced to only just slightly more than two years of the remaining Franjo Tudjman's term in the office of the president. On the other hand, however persistently it may be claiming exactly the opposite, the opposition is afraid that its victory will be so narrow and unconvincing that it will enable the rival to refuse to hand over power. This fear is intensified lately by rumours coming from Tudjman's camp that ban of coalition formation could be introduced into the election law. This would wreck the already completed plan for running in the elections of the opposition which has organised itself with great difficulties into two coalitions (SDP-HSLS and HSS-LS-IDS-HNS), and now, just before the elections, the wholse structure would tumble down.

The other threat is that instead of nine electoral districts as agreed by the uncompleted agreement of HDZ and the opposition, Croatia may be divided into ten, eleven of even twelve of them. At the same time the number of deputies elected in each district would be reduced which would along with the ban of establishing coalitions be equal to a "death penalty" for small parties and practically all except Racan's SDP could be considered to be that. That is why it should not be a surprise that the opposition parties gathered in the so-called "six" suddenly decided to initiate negotiations with HDZ on the new election law and supervision of television all over again. Negotiations were interrupted last month allegedly because of irreconcilable stands concerning primarily the television which a new legal framework is demanded for which should be transformed from a single-party one into public, but nobody is mentioning that any more.

Nobody is demanding even any more that the TV editors who are at the same time holding the leading posts in HDZ abandon one or the other. Instead, the only demand that is put forward is that a special inter-party commission be established which would follow the work of TV and punish obvious cases of party bias. This seems to have been done just in order not to create the impression of complete helplessness on the public. Nevertheless, the scandal with the Constitutional Court created not only such an impression, but an even worse one. It showed that in the negotiations with HDZ the opposition is not always the inferior partner which is tacticly withdrawing before a stronger party, but that in fact it uses party egoism of HDZ as an alibi for its own egoism, regardless of consternation of the public which could in this case simply be taken for granted.

MARINKO CULIC