GREAT LEADERS AND SMALL CALCULATIONS

Marinko Culic

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, November 1 1999

Ivica Racan personally initiated the two-day ultimatum of the six opposition parties to Tudjman, to declare publicly whether he would accept the election results, but such a move could have impressed only a few naive people (Racan is certainly not among them), who hoped that the President would respond to such an ultimatum. If the six opposition parties had really wanted to point out the key issue of a hand-over of power, they would have accepted, and not rejected, the IDS' initiative to propose a bill concerning this problem. They would have also initiated a procedure to determine the constitutionality of the law, according to which a major part of the authority of the House of Representatives, after it's dissolution, is transfered to the Government. It seems that the most important opposition parties actually never expected an answer to their question.

What is he doing to us! - lamented the opposition's representatives last week, looking at Vladimir Seks, whose picture appeared like a ghost on the screens of the internal TV every now and then. And really, Seks, with his olympian superiority, played with the opposition, mocking their willy-nilly behaviour during the several-months-long negotiations with HDZ (which started with the opposition's proposal of the election bill, was continued with the joint proposal with HDZ, which was even put to the vote in the Parliament, and ended with the negotiations that were renewed shortly before the definite breakdown).

The worst part is that there was a danger hanging in the air, that HDZ could punish their unreliable and hesitating partner, by adding something unfavourable to the final version of the bill. A rented representative of a dwarfish Slavonian party was also in action, and he inserted an amendment which forbade coalitions. Had this amendment been accepted, it would have instantly destroyed the election strategy of the opposition to contest the forthcoming elections united in two blocks, which ws put together after a lot of struggle. Nevertheless, it became apparent that this was only a bluff, and that, even after everything that had happened, the opposition didn't understand that Seks had prepared a mousetrap for them.

SEEKING ALIBI

He certainly is a cunning person, who likes to cheat and make a fool of his opponent, but this is not important in this case. Seks tricked the opposition much earlier, in a long and complicated game, in which the opposition put the noose around its own neck. It all started last autumn, when the negotiations between the ruling party and the opposition began. Those negotiations weren't something bad in itself. On the contrary, it was the first time that HDZ agreed to pass an election law in agreement with their political opponents, and this was an infallible sign of the forthcoming shift of power in all post-communist countries.

But, instead of insisting on the quick passing of the bill, in order to make the election rules known in time (which was one of the forgotten terms for the admission to the Council of Europe), the opposition engaged in the several-months-long haggling about something that technically requires not more than several days. When the negotiations were half concluded, a clause, according to which the law must be passed four months before the elections, was added, but that minimum term was also off, because our opposition sextet remembered last week to offer a resumption of the negotiations. This is when Seks appeared, with his mocking and malicious remarks that were completely misunderstood by the stunned opposition.

Seks and HDZ never really cared about some concrete lawful solution, reached either by agreement, or by tricking the opposition; if they did, they would have done it long ago. They wanted to drag the opposition into long and pointless negotiations, which were to fulfil two main purposes. The first one is to get an alibi for their claim that the elections will be "fair", which immediately provokes doubts that they won't be (this is probably why the European Union "strongly" suggested to Matesa, but obviously sending a message to the opposition, that such a law shouldn't be adopted). The other purpose is to drag the opposition parties away from their basic political programs that they have just started to create, mostly badly.

DIRECTING DISGRACE

The example of SDP is very interesting, as their attitude toward capitalism is so favourable, that it falls under the usual standards of the "capitalist" countries. It's not much better with HSLS, LS or HNS, whose advocacy of the liberal economy and free enterprise no one even notices, and if someone does, he doesn't understand what it consists of.

As a result of this, the main opposition parties have become tight bureaucratic groups that care only for their interests after the elections. When we consider this, they seem to be not different from HDZ, so that Seks was left with only one more thing to do. To push those seven parties into the same basket and cover them with the same mud, so that no one would be able to distinguish one from another.

This final operation of polluting the Croatian political space, which was apparently completed by the Slavonian trio Seks, Kramaric and Arlovic, was completed by the unforgettable election of the eight Constitutional Court judges. A part of the opposition parties openly took part in directing this disgrace, and the rest of them played dumb extras, with the alleged alibi that they didn't know about all this (although it is obvious that everything the opposition has been doing for the last year is the election and, lately, personnel engineering).

And what was done in order to wash away that shame? Practically nothing. Gotovac became silent, as if he is not able to read even a word from his morality Bible he never separates from, and Racan mustered courage to make only a small additional step. He admitted that the opposition could be criticised, but at the same time, together with Budisa (!), he allowed the opportunity for the two parties to form a coalition with "certain individuals from HDZ", in case they win in the elections. So, it turned out that the two of them never really understood the point of the Constitutional Court scandal. It is not in the disregard of the procedure, as Racan moans, as the procedure was hardly regulated at all. The point is that it was a rehearsal of the division of power regardless of the election results (the people in power are allowed to elect the Constitutional Court judges, for a certain price), and without asking the people who, in this case only colloquially, call themselves law "professionals".

SILENCE AGAINST SILENCE

No wonder that, two weeks later, we still haven't heard some criticism of this scandal. Instead, Racan, practically the boss of the six, decided to do a "spectacular" and witty manoeuvre, which was to draw the attention of the public to something else. He personally initiated - as was corroborated by two sources - a two day ultimatum of the six to Tudjman, demanding that he declare whether he would accept the elections results. This could have impressed only a few naive people (Racan is certainly not one of them) who hoped that Tudjman would respond to such an ultimatum.

If the six opposition parties had really wanted to point out the key issue of a handover of power, they would have accepted, and not rejected the IDS' initiative to propose a bill concerning this problem. They would have also started a procedure to determine the constitutionality of the law, according to which a major part of the authority of the House of Representatives, after it's dissolution, is transfered to the Government. It seems that the most important opposition parties never really expected an answer to their question, just as they still haven't answered the question whether they would form a coalition with HDZ after the elections. It looks like we're dealing with two poles of the same silence, and that, when the time comes, both sides will speak up about the subject, while for now they prefer to keep quiet about it.

The last events in the Parliament immediately raised doubts among the many supporters of the SDP-HSLS coalition, and the results of the recent polls show that SDP is running neck to neck with HDZ, and ends up on top only when their coalition partner HSLS is added to them. However, those polls are so superficial that they should be understood only as a general indicator of the public opinion. There is, however, one thing that remained unchanged-the HDZ electoral body gets tighter as the elections approach, although this was believed to be over, since, a couple of years ago, it was noticed that not even this, otherwise the most loyal electoral body, is immune to abstinence.

STRONG HAND REGIME

If these expectations really are partly betrayed, there could be two reasons for that. The first one is an aggressive HDZ campaign, which presents this party as the strongest guarantee of traditional values, especially ethnically clean state (throwing out Serbs from the electoral arena). This party has come ideologically very close to NDH (new posts for Vukojevic, Kujundjic and others), and to the strong hand regime (raids).

We shouldn't doubt that this pleases a part of the HDZ voters that have abandoned them during the past several years, because of their neglect of the "original" principles that brought them to power. But, the more important reason for this is that HDZ, although it resembles a throughly rusted bulldozer, is still the only one that keeps digging and doing something. The opposition, on the other hand, has buried itself in inter-party games, which have almost completely alienated them from the real needs of the people, and because of which, although the opposition has never been as strong as now, they cannot be sure about the result in the elections.

Translated by Feral Tribune in November 1999