by Drago HEDL
At the time this weekly magazine was started, several months after the January 2000 elections, Marinko Mikulic still hoped to get hold of Vjesnik, and through it the Croatian Printworks, his old dream. Namely, even during Tudman's rule Mikulic sought a way to use his tested formula - invest goods in a company and then when debts add up, convert the debts into an ownership stake - to take control of Hrvatski Obzor, Tudman's favorite weekly, which the former president, in spite of huge losses, could not bear to shut down.
Everything was almost totally agreed. Mikulic gave statements that Hrvatski Obzor was not his main target, but that he wanted to take control of 49 percent of shares of the Croatian Printworks. When the loss making Vjesnik and profitable Croatian Printworks, became one company based on Tudman's wishes, and as Vjesnik owed a lot of money to Mikulic's PAN paper industry, the Croatian paper king thought that the best way to take control of the Croatian Printworks was by entering the company "through the back door", by buying Hrvatski Obzor. The next step was supposed to be the payment of the debts by an ownership stake in the printworks and the dream about 49 percent of shares would be fulfilled.
But when in January 2000 government changed, Mikulic came up with a new strategy. Even though he described the perennial project Fokus as a weekly that would promote the "social views of the Catholic church", he obviously, for pragmatic reasons, gave up that concept. The editorial board, led by Mladen Maloca chose a different concept, so that the first issues of Fokus, partly because of the journalists who wrote for the magazine, resembled the concept of Danas or another two ephemeral publications, Pecat and Tjednik.
At the same time, as an owner of a leftist [liberal] news magazine Mikulic started sending messengers to the new authorities. He assessed that the center-left editorial policy was a way to curry favor with the new authorities and finally get control of Vjesniak and later the Croatian Printworks, so that the key people from the editorial board literally ran circles around Zeljka Antunovic, Antun Vujic, Davorko Vidovic and, while he seemed important, president Stipe Mesic. But, as Vjesnik figured in many other plans as well, and the new authorities were getting other information, Mikulic soon realized that he had to change his approach.
Officially, the straw that broke the camel's back was the article about the murder of Milan Levar published in the first September issue of Fokus, last year. At a dinner in a restaurant in Zagreb, also attended by a friend of Mikulic's, General Jozo Milicevic, and the lawyer representing the Catholic Association of Employers, Zlatko Kelemen, the Croatian paper king complained that he had been contacted by "his friends", Catholic bishops, of Djakovo-Srijem Martin Srakic and Gospic-Senj Milan Bogovic who asked him how he could allow that views totally different from his own be promoted by the magazine he owns.
Mikulic announced a total change in the editorial policy, much closer to his original idea about the weekly magazine that would promote "social theories of the Catholic Church". Maloca was dismissed soon afterwards, and Mikulic recruited Boris Komadina, who likes to introduce himself as a personal friend of General Mirko Norac, as the new editor-in-chief. In accordance with the new editorial policy of Fokus (which in the meantime changed the image and was printed in Osijek in the Glas Slavonije printworks, as Mikulic wanted to collect some old debts, due to unpaid newsprint deliveries, in that manner) a new team of writers and journalists was put together.
In December last year, Marinko Mikulic was one of more prominent guests at the noisy promotion of the Association for Croatian Identity and Prosperity in the Zagreb hotel Sheraton. Since then, the leaders of HIP have had plenty of space in Fokus to promote their ideas. Mikulic's meetings with Miroslav Ivic, a former head manager of Slobodna Dalmacija, have become increasingly frequent. Officially, the reason for their meetings was cooperation in marketing, as for a while Slobodna took care of marketing for Fokus. However, according to knowledgeable sources from the Fokus editorial board, Ivic and Mikulic were actually looking for ways to preempt a possible government's decision about Slobodna Dalmacija and take control of the daily. The plan was not a simple one. Mikulic tried his tested approach. He supplied Slobodna Dalmacija with newsprint, the debts were piling up and the two of them were seeking a way to convert those debts into an ownership stake.
Mikulic did not exclusively rely on HIP in his plans, but also counted on several prominent members of the HSLS, above all a former representative in the parliament, Ivica Sutalo, a HSLS politician from Dakovo, for whom he found a well-paid position in his corporation. There was a plan that Sutalo take over Narodne Novine but, according to Feral's sources from the SDP leadership, that was at the last moment prevented by an SDP official. Both Sutalo and Mikulic have excellent relations with the Minister of Defense, Jozo Rados (their acquaintance dates from the time when Rados for a while worked as a high school teacher in Dakovo), and their main supporter in the Ministry of Defense was the HSLS politician Ante Damjanovic, a Rados' advisor for secret services, and a close fiend of the Hague prisoner Tihomir Blaskic, who has worked for the SIS, even though he was even then a HSLS member, since 1994. He got a job from the former HSLS politician Goran Dodig.
In the meantime Boris Komadina was replaced as the editor-in-chief by Tomislav Vukovic, at one point Zivko Kustic's deputy at Glas Koncila. Vukovic spent some time as a diplomat, and Mikulic chose him for the editor-in-chief convinced that his idea about Fokus as a magazine that would promote "social credo of the Catholic Church" would finally be realized.
In his visits to the editorial offices Mikulic emphasized that he did not care so much about Fokus' circulation as about its influence. Some of the people on the editorial board claim that the ultimate Mikulic's goal was to start a Catholic daily newspaper and that Fokus after all the precipitous changes - from the center-left to the extreme right editorial policy - is only preparing ground for that project.
Sources from Fokus claim that the denouement of the Slobodna Dalmacija crisis could speed up that Mikulic's project. Some of the journalists from the Split daily newspaper who have already published in Fokus should be the engine of that daily newspaper, and Josip Jovic is seen in some circles as its editor-in-chief. It remains to be seen to what extent his announced founding of a daily Slobodna Hrvatska corresponds to such stories, but it is interesting that these days both Jovic and Mikulic are abroad. The former is in Germany and the latter in Australia, and both are allegedly working hard on realizing a project in which they could pool their resources.
Similarly, the new authorities are not showing any interest in investigating the ways in which Marinko Mikulic, the Croatian paper king, took possession of the Zagreb Paper Factory, the biggest orchard in Croatia, Borinci in Vinkovci, PAN Trgopromet from Dakovo and TOB, at one time the largest trading company in Slavonski Brod. Even Mikulic's friends from the top of the Catholic Church hierarchy, concerned that he allows that the newspaper he publishes promote views different from his own, do not show any interest in finding out whether everything Mikulic does is indeed in the spirit of the "social credo of the Catholic Church", that has since recently allegedly been promoted in the weekly Fokus and should soon be promoted in a daily Catholic newspaper.
As I live from the money I earn as a journalist, I accepted the idea of starting a new news magazine that would among other include religious content, so that in February 2000 I joined Fokus as an editor of the religion section of the magazine. I had an agreement with the editor-in-chief Mladen Maloca and his deputy Vanja Sutlic that I was supposed to be a member of the editorial board and in my section be tolerant of other religious communities, instead of focusing only on the dominant, Catholic community. I published articles by numerous authors that are otherwise not admired by the Catholic bishops. However, I believed that they were interesting and also true believers.
My open editorial style and my writing was disliked by the owner, Marinko Mikulic. I also found out that Mikulic was sort of a protégé of some bishops, and especially of Dakovo-Srijem bishop Marijan Srakic.
On one occasion bishop Srakic attacked the idea of introduction of the subject religious culture into public schools, claiming that children from mixed marriages, those who are neither Serbs nor Croats but something in between, those who do not know either their nationality or religion, were advocating the introduction of such a subject. We were shocked by such an abuse of ethnicity and religion and published the bishop's statement with a short commentary in the article entitled "Religious Instruction for Yugo-nostalgics". That was allegedly the fuse, as bishop Srakic openly criticized Mikulic because of the material published in Fokus (I have been told that he was not the only one), and he in turn exerted pressure on Maloca to get rid of me. I later found out that Mikulic was especially upset that I had on one occasion reprinted an article by late Fr. Luka Vincetic, who used to write for Feral, the paper Mikulic abhors.
All in all, I soon realized that I was wasting my time in Fokus, but I stayed for a few more months trying to recover some of the unpaid wage arrears. Therefore, I was fired in September 2000, after the owner's and bishop's pressure on the editorial board with the following explanation; "Screw it Drago, that's how it is".
Soon afterwards Mikulic paid the wages he owed me, but he refused to pay several thousand kunas of traveling expenses I made with Sutlic's and Maloca's approval. As far as that is concerned, Maloca very elegantly washed his hands.