ZAGREB, 16 Oct, 2021 - In a comment on protests held outside the homes of members of the national coronavirus crisis management team, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Saturday that such shows were unnecessary as the government was acting responsibly in the coronavirus crisis.
"All those shows... are unnecessary because the government has acted reasonably, responsibly, appropriately and sensitively with regard to all possible segments of state functioning in the 600 days of the pandemic; other countries had months-long lockdowns," the PM said after a conference on agriculture, fisheries and forestry in Zagreb.
Noting that in Croatia there was a ban only on large gatherings and the work of night clubs, Plenković said that the protests did not seem rational, speculating if their real purpose was to generate social unrest.
About a dozen citizens gathered outside Health Minister Vili Beroš's home on Thursday evening after a Religious Instruction teacher from Križevci called on them to do so on his Facebook profile due to restrictions on visits to hospitalised children.
Beroš said that he understood their dissatisfaction, but that the place for dealing with such matters should be the Health Ministry.
Another group of protesters on Friday protested outside the home of the head of Zagreb's Hospital for Infectious Diseases, Alemka Markotić.
Asked if the situation could escalate and if members of the coronavirus crisis management team were under police protection since more protests had been announced, Plenković said that as far as he was aware, they were not.
Should someone resort to violence, they will be given police protection, he said, recalling that until the October 2020 terrorist attack "we had been very easy to approach."
"We are a normal, small Central European and Mediterranean country, civilised, warm, and we are good hosts... There are, on occasion, violent individuals but the Croatian people in general are not violent. These are exceptions. I call on them to calm down and be reasonable, there is no reason for drama, there are much worse situations than this," he said.
Asked about a possible parliamentary vote of no confidence in Finance Minister Zdravko Marić, Plenković said that no opposition motion questioning the government's work had been successful so far and neither would the latest one.
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