Renowned Political Scientist, Prof. Dr. Sc. Mirjana Kasapović

Translated by Dr. Dorothy S. McClellan

Pact of a Coup Junta that Decided 

to Come to Power by Unconstitutional Means

In her public appearances, Sanja Barić, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Rijeka, simply and understandably expressed the constitutional and legal dimension of the problems caused by the intention of President of Croatia Zoran Milanović to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections as a SDP candidate for prime minister and his immediate involvement in the election campaign of that party.

She immediately paid the price of her statement in which she assumed professional knowledge and, above all, the general state interest to personal left-wing political beliefs by being declared a “politically conducted constitutional lawyer” and reduced to a political handmaiden of the right, HDZ, and Andrej Plenković.

Such a fate probably awaits others who dare to publicly criticize the behavior of the Croatian President, SDP and members of his “left-liberal coalition” pseudo-liberal newspapers and portals that wholeheartedly cheer for them, and individuals who have publicly supported such action. The silence of professional and civil society organizations that are otherwise advertised on every incomparably more benign occasion is also extremely significant.

The Coup Junta Pact

From a political science perspective, the behavior of the Croatian President and all those who support him can be unambiguously labeled a coup d’état.

The president has not, as it is usually claimed, gone beyond the constitutional framework of the institution he comprises – the president of the state is not only a “personalized institution” but also an “institutionalized persona” – but, on the contrary, he remained within its framework and abuses it internally in order to achieve partial, personal and group political interests and goals.

He abuses the institution of the presidency by directly influencing the results of parliamentary elections and the composition of the future government. Some political and moral idiots among politicians, political ”analysts” and public intellectuals cheerfully welcomed such behavior as dynamizing the election and a welcome gladiatorial showdown between Milanovic and Plenkovic in an arena from which one will not come out alive, while the spectators, that is, the voters, will shout and enjoy the bloody wrestling of the president of the state and the prime minister.

Remember the Moon

Among them is former president Stipe Mesic, an unsurpassed builder of an empire of informal political power during his two mandates, who spoke out from while wandering around Azerbaijan, a famous Asian democracy, and who after 2000 prevented, as it has been repeatedly shown, the much-needed complete parliamentarization of the Croatian political system with the slogan: “I will not be a ficus.”

In order for the planned undertaking that the president of the state could not carry out alone due to the lack of organizational and infrastructural conditions, he made an unwritten pact with his former party, that is, with its president and several of his confidants, which conveniently turned into a coup junta that decided to come to power by unconstitutional means.

The Left’s Coup Methods a Thing of the Past?!

Obviously mistaken were those who thought that the traditional custom of the left to win power through revolutions and coups was a thing of the past. When it comes to the political enemy – some members of the SDP literally called HDZ a “political enemy” in front of the cameras – it is obviously thought that all means of action are allowed to execute the enemy.

There is no other way to explain those Saturday standing ovations to Milanovic at the SDP headquarters, that unreserved support for the coup actions of the former and current party president, Milanovic and Grbin, those glowing faces of SDP parliamentary deputies who had left the parliamentary benches just a few days before in which they had served another miserable term.

The parliamentary opposition in Croatia is traditionally made up of lazy people who, if elected, come to power completely unprepared.

Unprecedented Vulgarization of Political Discourse

The last mandate of the SDP’s parliamentary opposition was marked by a dimension that had not previously been characteristic of the “civilized” urban SDP versus the “primitive” rural HDZ. It is an unprecedented vulgarization of political discourse in which the expressions “stinks”, “dirty underpants”, “bare asses”, “take off your pants” (Grbin), “banging” (Hajdaš Dončić), etc. have entered – all terms from the mafia and bar demi-world.

This, I guess, was in response to Plenkovic’s newspeak, which polluted the linguistic and political climate with freakish constructs such as “deflation of the atmosphere”, “perpetuation of information”, “buffering of the crisis”, “emancipation of the topic”, “reestablishment of the culture of reading”, “calibrating expectations”, “evoking facts”, “synergy of work”, “tentative deadlines”, “opening meaningless themes”, “reduced expression” etc. But his right to “do what he wants” everywhere, even in language, is another great topic.

I have no doubt that the constitutional and democratic political system in Croatia will defend itself against this outrageous attack. It will be defended by the democratic civic majority, democratic institutions and organizations, and the democratic public, with representatives who cannot be silenced with denunciations and threats.

There are Many Undemocratic People Living in this Democracy

But a lesson should be learned from these developments – one should become aware of the fact that there are many ‘undemocratic people’ living in this democracy. If they were allowed to spread, they would indeed threaten Croatia, as the Weimar Republic once did, turning into a “democracy without

democrats.”

I am not a supporter of the concept of “defensive democracy” of the last century, but after these events I better understand those who advocated the right of democracies to defend themselves against their enemies by any means necessary, including the deprivation of the right to public action by anti-democratic actors.