To be honest, it was difficult to restrain from malicious satisfaction looking at, for example, the face of Mrs Ljerka Mintas. This, till yesterday interesting and well made-up face, suddenly became ugly on that electoral night; as if the collective frustration of her arrogant party, so stunned by the fact that it is no longer wanted, emerged through her make up. Ten years of misery and all kinds of humiliation are behind us, ten years of corruption, destruction, tearing of human lives, materially and literally. Doubts that the complete Tudjman's decade was purposeless were finally confirmed by the electoral victory of a man who peacefully handed over the power to Tudjman's party in 1990. But, are the euphoric messages of the winners and the media that the people massively elected changes completely true? Is it completely certain that the same nation would just as well seek changes if Franjo Tudjman lived long enough to take part in the elections?
Or is it rather that the Croats, brought up on the syndrome of the total faith in the benevolent Father, who doesn't know what his bad children do, didn't need to fell like traitors, now that the great Leader is gone. Now that he, the eternal carrier of all electoral lists of HDZ, wasn't there to point their hands in only one direction - towards the ballot with his name on it, which meant electing precisely those people against whom the Croats finally rose.
If it is not like this, wouldn't the election results from 1995 and 1997 be the same as this year's? Two years ago, was there less plundering and organised crime, in which the top people in HDZ participated? Wasn't everything about the unbelievable enrichment of Tudjman's and his associates' families, about the villas, firms, accounts in foreign banks.. already known two years ago? Weren't the Croats equally existentially endangered as they are today? Didn't we know about the para-institutions, abuse of secret services, outflow of money to Bosnia-Hercegovina? Of course that all these things were well known, but Tudjman was alive, and on the wave of the fatal adoration of the Father, the people always gave their trust to him, and to those whom Tudjman created.
Less than a month after his death, the Croats, deprived of their fear and possible guilt, were able to give their votes to the same people who were here in the last elections too - neither worse, nor better than today - instead of those who, heaving lost their Father too, simply failed, looking like torn evil cartoon characters, scaring the children and rushing at each other. The opposition could peacefully watch these inheritors of a dangerous cult so persistently elected by the people, fall down. Precisely because of their good luck in winning the elections, the new Croat authorities face an even more difficult task. They simply don't have the right to make comromises with any of their decisions any more. Neither Racan nor Budisa have the right to flirt with their own characters; briefly, this means that Budisa will have to overcome his nationalist narrow-mindedness, and Racan his habit to be only verbally decisive. Only after such changes will they be able to understand their obligation to initiate urgent changes in judiciary, so that at least a part of HDZ criminals could be punished. Their obligation is to request instant resignations of the people in the governmental institutions and the media who implemented bad party decisions or poisoned the people with false and dangerous information. Both should stop trembling at every mention of the word revanchism, because that is only a defencive platitude of HDZ's "cleansers" and keepers of their dark fortifications, in the police, secret services, as well as at HTV and in Vjesnik.
The changes that Croats want don't refer only to economic and social issues; this country equally lacks decent independent journalism, honest judiciary, respect of the civil rights, and prosecution of criminals. To establish all this, it's not important only that the new people come, but that the old ones go away, without being duped by the sentimental demagogic rhetoric that we "don't need further persecution". A new suit cannot be put on a dirty body without smearing. And finally, the Croats deserve the way out from this little, xenophobic, self-reliant country. The first condition to do this is to make possible the return of the Serbs, but also the co-operation in extradition of "our boys" sought by the International Court in The Hague. Not only because of the requests of the world, but because of the moral purification of the Croats.
The establishment of that Other Croatia, however, necessarily requires a complete break with Tudjman's Croatia. And this excludes the possible election of Tudjman's Foreign Minister and the HDZ candidate for the president of the Republic. Because, the only difference between Mate Granic and Vladimir Seks is that the first one is kind and meek, and the other one unpleasant and aggressive. But Mate Granic is a man of a certain immorality and typical Tudjman's revisionism. He almost thinks that it is his and his dead party's right to become the President of that Other Croatia, suppressing into his own and our oblivion the fact that precisely he was Tudjman's Foreign Minister when Tudjman was attacking Bosnia. His claim that he was against the concentration camps in Bosnia, but actively took part in the division of this country, or the fact that nature gave him that mild expression of the face with which he so hypocritically says to the nation, and to the foreign countries - "I've been a part of this dictatorship only by chance, it's not my fault" - still doesn't mean that he is without responsibility.
Instead of silently stepping off the political scene, this man, who never even thought of disassociating from a single move of his party, and who made fortune in the period of total economic destruction of this country, tries to persuade us that precisely he would be able to lead the country in the future.
Briefly, neither Mate Granic deserves to be the President of the country, nor the Croats deserve the continuation of Tudjmanism with other means.