LAW OF CONNECTED SMILES

HDZ showed a moving understanding for the first steps of the new power holders, and almost idyllic harmony was achieved in some delicate issues of their mutual relationships; Budisa created an image of himself as a serious critic of Franjo Tudjman from his own perspective, which only partly fulfilled the expectations of the voters who obviously wanted a lot more. The one who gave them that was Mesic, who is a lot more than a critic of Tudjman. He is a comedian who no longer wants to debate with Tudjman, but only to make jokes at his expense.

by Marinko CULIC

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, February 14 2000

Recently, a foreign reporter conducted a survey among the citizens of Sarajevo to find out their opinion on the political changes in Croatia. Just as he expected, the reactions were very good. Still, one answer shocked him. The people in Sarajevo have so much trust in their neighbor now that they wouldn't have anything against a confederation with Croatia.

The fact that now offers that had been rejected with disgust only three months ago as a stinking secretion of the worst tudjmansim are discretely made to Croatia, seems to be the best compliment the new authorities have received so far. However, at the same time it is a shining example of the numerous misunderstandings that stem from electoral promises. Everyone has different plans with those promises now, and the voters are sometimes a very strange sort.

They often miss to see that, in the burning wish to see the results of the changes as soon as possible, they actually bury themselves back in the same swamp they previously wanted to escape from. An angry listener of Radio 101 called in the program in which Slavko Linic was a guest and managed to silence this well-known hothead from Rijeka, which is news in itself. Stop fucking with us and get those journalist-like creatures from HTV out of our sight, the angry listener said, not caring a bit for the need for some procedural time-table before the changes, as the only way to stay different from the methods used in the early nineties.

Should only that particular listener be blamed for such guerrilla understanding of the "electoral revolution" from January, or do the gurus of the politics of "the third way" share some of his political crudness and illiteracy? This issue imposes itself on everyone with sensitive enough an ear to mind the boasting of the SDP-HSLS top officials that they themselves, and not some Mesic, overthrew HDZ, and therefore have the right to redesign the post-Tudjman Croatia the way they believe is right. Dear God, this transvestism of the hairy anti-HDZ chest actually demonstrated that a great and heroic HDZ heart beats in it!!

INVENTORS OF DEMOCRACY

When Budisa blurted in the foam of the electoral campaign that he represented the coalition that "defeated HDZ", could it have sounded differently than the echo of the old and boring statements that HDZ created Croatia? Therefore, HDZ created Croatia, and SDP-HSLS - by putting an end to them - created, or shall we say invented, democracy. As HDZ claimed the right to organize their state the way they wanted, the SDP-HSLS duo claims the right to set the rules for their democracy, and then to impose those rules on all others, and to make a selection of what democracy is and what it isn't.

It was amusing when these two leaders of the state and democracy met for the first time after the elections in the Parliament, but if anyone expected to see them fight, he was very wrong. HDZ showed moving understanding for the first steps of the new power holders, and almost idyllic harmony was achieved in some particularly delicate issues . To tell the truth, the people from HDZ severely criticized (but did not reject) the four year program of the new Government, findingthat it was below the level of the electoral promises, which is true. The new Prime Minister announced the growth rate of "at least two percent" for this year, then " up to five percent", while before the election they promised in their electoral declaration that the growth rate would be "higher than five percent".

The aims of the employment policy were similarly cut down. But, as soon as the structural state issues were reached, those small misunderstandings instantly vanished. HDZ only wriggled in their benches when Racan's Government started passing laws even before the Parliament had a vote of confidence in the new Government. The appointment of Goran Granic as the deputy Prime Minister caused hardly any reactions, although there is no such function in the Constitution.

Seks said that the new Government had the right to design the top of the executive power the way they think is right, which could have implied that the new Government would have the more support the more similar to the old one it is. And really, the brotherhood of souls in the Croatian universe was instantly achieved with the scandalous election of Ivic Pasalic for the vice-president of the Parliament. This showed that the most obscure people in HDZ can more easily advance in the state hierarchy than in the hierarchy of their own party. It is even worse that Pasalic's election was justified by the allegedly principled need to solve such issues by consensus. This raised the relations with HDZ to a level higher than the relations within the six party ruling coalition, from where consensus was banished as a contagious relict of a twisted, self-governing democracy.

END OF AN ERA

Still, the worst thing is that this election happened simultaneously with the campaign against Mesic, who was almost proclaimed a notorious fifth column of the Croatian democratic revival, while Pasalic immediately found his deserved place in this revival, which fits him like a glove. There were some attempts later to cover it up with the ashes of a stillborn product of the two biggest loosers of the presidential campaign - Budisa and Tomac. According to them, Mesic won thanks to Pasalic's support, and the army of his supporters consisted of, watch this, joint forces of the right-wingers gathered around HDZ and left-wingers around Nacional and Feral.

All this was said when the public already knew about the results of voting for the presidential candidates in each county. Everyone saw that Mesic won precisely where the opposition had won before, and even in the strongest strongholds of SDP-HSLS Budisa managed to surpass Mesic by a hair's breadth. So, Budisa and Tomac's workshop for production of electoral defeats was ready to reduce the victory of the opposition in the parliamentary elections only to degrade what Mesic achieved in the presidential elections.

Since all this has happened, we should protect the victorious coalition from its prodigal sons and say clearly and loudly what actually was the crucial difference between Mesic and Budisa. Mesic was the first politician who dared to say that Tudjman's era was finished and that nothing from that junk-shop was worth saving for the future. The truth is that he did it with a lot of superficial and selective memory of the last ten years and much demagogic speak and easily made promises. But, this was enough to rise visibly above Budisa's level. Budisa always made an impression of being a Tudjman's critic who is unable to set free from Tudjman's shadow, and when the campaign began, it became obvious that he was also attracted by the darkness of his basement (open attempts to benefit from the intelligence war against Mesic, started by the secret services in the obvious attempt to impress the new power holders with their potential services). When we add to it that, not so much people from HDZ, as the hardened examples of the vindictive right-wingers have started to gather around Budisa, the final picture becomes clear.

NATIONALISM AT DEATHBED

Despite the official support from SDP, Budisa has become a personification of the conservative Croatia, even a threat to the changes that his and Racan's parties fought for in the parliamentary elections.

This must be one of the reasons why Racan in the end left him alone in the campaign, although it is more likely that they drifted apart after Budisa's decision to play the card of angry anti-communism from his youth. It was a fatally bad move. In the moment when the Croatian nationalism of the nineties was at its deathbed, Budisa decided to annoint himself as the cult martyr of Croatian nationalism from the seventies. He completely forgot that, from the present perspective, the massive student movements from '71 don't look any different from a revolutionary populist movement - and certainly more than Mesic's "primitive populism" - with completely obsolete and forgotten messages. In opposition to this, Mesic carefully erased from his biography all hints of heroic and messianic past, and if such hints did occur, they always came with a joke or a witty remark (while Budisa speaks about himself as of an unyielding prisoner sentenced with a reason, the chronicles of the same prison remember Mesic as a joker who fooled around with everybody, including the prison guards).

In short, Budisa created a picture of himself as a serious critic of Tudjman from his own point of view, which only partly fulfilled the expectations of the voters who obviously wanted something more. Mesic gave them that. He is more than a Tudjman's critic. He is a comedian, who no longer wants to debate with Tudjman, but only to make jokes at his expense.

Translated by Feral Tribune and M.Kocic