There is corruption and there is HDZ’s corruption. It is corruption squared

MAYBE you noticed, and maybe you didn’t, but it is interesting to look back – when corruption is talked about in the public space, HDZ members do not deny it. They have a much smarter approach.

When it comes to corruption, HDZ politicians behave exactly as HDZ’s Damir Habijan said yesterday in HRT’s program U zreža Prvog. Referring to the election results, he said, among other things: “When we talk about gathering an anti-corruption majority, then it would be good for everyone to look in their own backyard.”

HDZ’s approach to talking about corruption, at least for the slightly more positioned members of the party, is “not to deny it” because you simply cannot deny it – you have to relativize it. Something along the lines of: Yes, we have corruption, but you also have corruption, those third parties also have corruption…

“We are all the same” as a protective mechanism

When HDZ talks about corruption, it uses exactly the same mechanism of relativization that will be used by someone who drives 100 km/h through a neighborhood and says – well, everyone drives a little faster. Exactly the same mechanism of relativizing someone who will sit in the car after three large beers and say – well, everyone drinks sometimes. And the same mechanism of relativizing someone who will rewrite the doctorate and say – well, everyone sometimes rewrites on the exam.

It’s a practiced, very precisely arranged policy – if you can’t deny something, then don’t deny it. In some cases, this tactic works – if you commit a minor offense in traffic and honestly tell the police officer that it’s clear to you that you’ve done something stupid and you don’t get away with stupid explanations, you have a good chance of getting away with just a warning. But in this case of political corruption and politics-related corruption, nothing could be more wrong.

HDZ is a symbol of political corruption

When we talk about political corruption, HDZ is its symbol. We can start from the 90s and the thieving model of privatization. At a time when a good part of the country was still occupied, when few people even knew what shares were, what shares were, what the value of a trading company was, a model of tycoon privatization was arranged in which some bought companies for kuna, while others could not. While in some other countries of the New Europe citizens received vouchers with shares, in Croatia workers could sometimes not buy out the company even if they offered money.

Let’s remember Sanader – the beautiful European story of a polished prime minister who knew languages ​​and wore perfectly tailored suits ended as an episode of kleptomania. By the way, the HDZ was also legally convicted of corruption as a legal entity, as a political party, something that happens extremely rarely. The criminal liability of a legal entity is something that does not just happen, for such a verdict you have to do something very bad.

Then came the new polished prime minister, Andrej Plenković, a man with, as they say, sophisticated radars. Let’s remember what he said a few years ago. “After this experience, I really have such sophisticated radars and filters that it is clear to me in three seconds who has what kind of agenda and who is spinning some kind of project or some kind of impression on me, for which they want to leave the impression that something is wrong,” he said for himself. Plenković.

How did they manage to remain without 30 ministers?

Plenković himself, truth be told, has no personal affairs, but despite the radars, Gabrijela Žalac, Lovro Kuščević, Darko Horvat (a special success, the minister was arrested during his mandate!), to name a few, passed him by. There are only 30 ministers who have been dismissed because of various affairs, from wrongly declared residence to a small problem because you cannot run a ministry from prison. And ministers, let’s remind you, are people proposed by the prime minister, his personal choice, persons of the greatest trust, behind whom stands the one who appointed them. has suggested. Of course, Plenković can say that he couldn’t know everything about everyone – but to make a mistake in 30 of them? And that in a country where even the judiciary is not effective, and half of the media do not investigate the affairs of the government at all, but mock it.

Not to mention the lower levels of dividing the political pie – cities, municipalities, institutions, all the way to the printed out-of-date presentations of HDZ politicians that strangely get the categorization of “peer-reviewed teaching material”, one of the conditions for advancement in the profession. So, while some write a textbook for that condition for a year, some smart people with a party card carefully take a bunch of old presentations, click “print to PDF” and the required condition for the professorship is there.

We agree, there is corruption in other parties as well

HDZ politicians will say that there is corruption in other parties as well. Of course there is. Anyone who comes to power among hundreds of officials will also have problematic people. Some simply won’t know the job and will get away with the crime from the lower levels, they will sign something they shouldn’t. Some will get into financial problems due to alcoholism and gambling (topics we don’t talk about too much in Croatia) and try to solve them with other people’s money. Some will get caught up in the fray over travel warrants, and some in more serious crime.

Any party that is in power will be approached by a number of people who do not have honorable intentions – these people will talk nicely, some will even have nice CVs, they will talk about work and honesty and, of course, do the opposite. All governments in Croatia have appointed some incompetent people. Bad regulations that favored corruption were also introduced, let’s just remember the pre-bankruptcy settlements, those first versions of the law that were passed during the SDP government.

HDZ will even say that it is actively fighting corruption

HDZ will say that, of course, it fights against corruption – and it won’t even lie. During the HDZ governments, some regulations were passed that make corruption more difficult. Permits for various activities on the maritime domain now go through tenders, which is a much better solution than the infamous “fastest finger”, which we had until less than a year ago.

The regulation on office operations, passed a few years ago, made it impossible to “manually” keep office books, whereby it was easy to backdate any writing or to enter a forgotten paper at a later date. Now it is realistically much more difficult. And that should not be denied. But, again, this does not change the essence of the relationship between the HDZ and corruption.

In the coming weeks, there will certainly be a lot of talk about corruption, and Damir Habijan has well, I believe, planned the path that the HDZ will follow in this matter – yes, everyone has it, so let everyone sweep it in their yard.

We have to agree on one thing – corruption really exists in all countries, even those Asian ones where you lose your head because of it. It is also present in the most developed Western societies – you will not, in fact, need to pay someone a “pinky” for any solution or license to which you are entitled, but if you try to enter, for example, military suppliers, the world around you will suddenly become complicated and you will be overwhelmed a company whose board members go to lunch with “their” congressman.

No matter how much corruption others have, HDZ has immeasurably more

In Croatian conditions, one thing should not be forgotten – no matter how bad everyone else was, no matter how bad regulations they passed that favored corruption, no matter how much they did not make the reforms they could (for example, changes to the electoral law, the SDP could have solved that), no matter how many their trusted people had chickens who cheated on travel orders – HDZ has all of that squared away.

Nowhere, in any state of a developed democracy, someone could remain without 30 ministers and remain in power, let alone have a chance to organize the government for the third time. Why and how it happened and where the SDP and the team made a mistake thinking that they would easily gain the trust of the citizens – that is another topic that will be widely written about in the coming weeks and months.

But when talking about corruption, we should not forget one thing – HDZ is the first. Then at least ten places are free, so we can talk about others. And if the HDZ gets a majority for the third time, which it is already smiling at, only one thing is certain – we won’t have to wait long for some new affair. What American radio hosts would say: “Stay tuned!”