by Toni GABRIC
"Tudman often criticized leading HDZ officials telling them that only I know how to explain his policy," Zdravko Tomac during his presidential election campaign, summer of 1997.
"Zdravko Tomac and I have something in common and that is that both of us participated from within and for a while in the process of the creation of the Croatian State as members of the Democratic Unity Government. From within we saw that the opposition demands were frequently totally unrealistic," Drazen Budisa said in one of his bouts of honesty, in an interview given in early 1998. That discrediting confession can be used as a key for the understanding of political characters of Drazen Budisa and Zdravko Tomac and their intertwined political careers. Drazen Budisa and Zdravko Tomac are participants in the most recent scandal in connection with the Hague Tribunal, the first scandal of this kind since the departure of the HDZ from power, professionally timed at the time of the departure of the two most influential politicians on an eagerly awaited trip to the US.
The National Unity Government left behind itself tails that are dragging until today, having in mind the inconvenient fact that the first wave of unpunished violence against Serbs took place exactly during its tenure. That violence, together with state-wide practice of denying Croatian citizenship to Serbs, their evictions from apartments and dismissal from work, revealed Tudman's plan to reduce the number of members of that ethnic community to "a desirable number". Both Tomac and Budisa, calling on higher state interests, consciously ignored violations of human rights and war crimes committed by the Croatian side, at the same time criticizing those who tried to record those violations and crimes and inform the domestic and foreign public about them.
Besides, Tomac is now justifiably criticized for using Vukovar for the setting for his attack against alleged investigations of the Hague Tribunal. Terrifying backdrop of that town was supposed to provide emotional weight to Tomac's words; however, as a vice-president of the Government that almost without a peep implemented Tudman's policy, he was among the distinguished participants in the surrender of that town. The National Unity Government closed its eyes, individually and collectively, to the surrender of Vukovar to Milosevic's troops without appropriate defense. As it turned out later, that was a conscious Tudman's "sacrifice" whose purpose was to secure the international recognition of Croatia. The fall of Vukovar and the "predictable" massacre of its inhabitants and defenders was later for years exploited as an emotional topic for all local demagogues and populists, including now Tomac.
Budisa left Greguric's government because of his disagreement with the formation of protected zones (UNPA), in which he had a more hard-line position than Tudman. Tomac, according to his version of the story, left the Government because of his disagreement with Tudman's aggression on Bosnia, although evil tongues claim that he left the vice-presidential position in the government only to have more time to prepare for the coming elections. By the way, Tomac likes to portray himself as a critic of Tudman's policy in Bosnia, but the written history puts that in somewhat different perspective. "I can deny the claim that Croatia was not an aggressor in Bosnia. You know, Tudman's illusions and his vacillation with respect to Bosnia-Hercegovina are one thing, and real policy is something else," is one of his statements.
Tomac was valuable to Racan's party as a ticket to the club of "patriotic" political parties, which in the new circumstances corresponded to the former comfortable status of an "honest intellectual" or a "constructive critic" of the Socialist authorities. Tomac fully utilized his conformist talent, to the perfection developed in the "scientific and ideological" work and successful swimming through the Communist Party structures. "When the state is endangered, both the right and the left must act together. Once the danger of war is over, then the struggle for the democratic state begins," is Tomac's motto from those times. By the way, "The SDP was never an opposition to the Croatian State, and we protected the authorities even when we disagreed with them."
One of the most sickening political events from mid-nineties is his trip to Argentina and a meeting with the members of the Ustashe emigration at a commemorative mass celebrating the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) [pro-Nazi Croatian puppet state during WWII], on April 10. According to the entry in his diary, Tomac stated that Ivo Rojnica, an Ustashe official in Dubrovnik and signatory of racial laws about persecution of Jews, fell overjoyed into his arms and started kissing him "like his own brother". Elderly Ivo Korsky greeted him warmly and he was approached by the son of Poglavnik's [the Leaders's] minister Frkovic. All of them were hugging him and kissing him and shaking his hand and greeting him warmly.
In the general joy Tomac was approached by political emigrants who have all their lives been hiding from UDBA [the secret service of the former Yugoslavia]. They accepted him as a representative of their state, Croatia... "Many are horrified that I shook hands with Ustashe. Even if I kissed some of them, I do not see anything strange in that," Tomac spoke later. It was generally considered that Tomac had set up a meeting with Ustashe, followed with the ritual of mutual forgiveness, deliberately in order to obtain a pardon for his part of a Communist ideologist, because of which he eagerly accepted and improvised on Tudman's idea of reconciliation with Ustashe.
Tomac also leaned towards cooperation with the HDZ in other situations that seemed crucial, which, truth to tell, was greeted by understanding of most of mainstream opposition politicians. In the midst of the Zagreb crisis, when Tudman refused to confirm four mayors proposed by the opposition, Tomac was the president of the City Council. He then advocated the exhausting strategy of dragging out the crisis, with a series of proposed candidates for the mayor so that their rejection would "prove the undemocratic character of Tudman's authorities". "In struggle for democracy, individuals are irrelevant," was Tomac's classic Marxist-Leninist comment on the slanderous attacks on HSLS's mayoral candidates released by the HDZ intelligence services. In 1996, the undemocratic character of the HDZ had to be proven only to political idiots and perhaps to Zdravko Tomac; but in the and, when that undemocratic character was finally "established", exactly Tomac advocated new negotiations with the HDZ, "in order to prove that we have nothing against the HDZ."
His cooperative stance was repeated in 1997, when he publicly calculated with the formation of a national salvation government "providing the HDZ established normal atmosphere for cooperation with all parties." He suggested that the opposition cease its efforts to cooperate against the HDZ, although by then it was clear that the joint approach of the opposition was the only way to successfully shake the foundations of the HDZ's rule.
Budisa's campaign also produced Tomac's portraits of Ivica Racan as "an exceptional historical personality" who had during the last ten years "experienced a total political transformation". The question whether this was done due to an expectation that only a Tudman's type of an authoritarian politician can win an election in Croatia, or because of Tomac's conformism which can only find his bearings with the assistance of firm and stable pointers.
Therefore, Tomac's blowing into Budisa's Hague trumpets should not be surprising. First Mesic's and Racan's comments from the US that the Hague investigators should be allowed to work without pressures of the legislative and executive authorities, leave open the assumption that the two of them (although they were not blameless in the Stipetic affair) finally made an agreement to leave Budisa and Tomac behind and continue without their assistance. That would probably lead to the fulfillment of the old Budisa's wish, to gather Veselica, Dodig, Separovic, Gabelica, and others and with them create a powerful party of nationally aware guys that would in peace implement the program of beatification of the Homeland War and Croatian undeniable sovereignty. Naturally, Zdravko Tomac, should join "the activities based on such a platform".