ZAGREB, January 11, 2020 - Prime Minister and HDZ party leader Andrej Plenković said in an interview with the Večernji List daily issue of Saturday that he was confident his party would win the next parliamentary election owing to its unity and the government's results, and that his government would continue to lead Croatia in the right direction.
He also announced that all the necessary decisions, including a decision on calling intraparty elections, would be made in time, adding that this year parliamentary elections would be held as well and that Croatia was now chairing the EU.
Plenković went on to say that anyone who believed that they could contribute to the party was welcome to run for HDZ president and that the winner would be decided by the party membership.
He added that his ambition, when he took over the leadership of the HDZ, had been to put his experience at the service of development of all parts of Croatia and the country's greater visibility in the world.
The government wants to present its achievements to the public in a more detailed and more convincing manner, Plenković said, adding that now that the government's results in all fields were much better than before, primarily for Croatian citizens, those achievements were not sufficiently valued.
"It is our task to enable the HDZ to stay, after the elections, the strongest and winning party, and I'm confident that we will achieve that goal," he said, adding that in the present election system, except in the case of large pre-election coalitions, a single party was not likely to win more than 76 parliamentary seats and that the HDZ would seek partners with a similar platform and worldview.
In that context, he recalled that the HDZ's decision of 2016 to choose as its partners MOST, all representatives of ethnic minorities and several deputies who had supported the HDZ, had been natural and logical.
He noted that the reason for the breakup of the coalition with MOST had been their disloyal decision not to support Finance Minister Zdravko Marić, who had been a member of a previous coalition government together with MOST.
Commenting on presidential candidate Miroslav Škoro, who in the first round of the recent presidential election came in third, Plenković said that Škoro was a former HDZ member of parliament and consul-general to Pecs and that he had never seen any signs of any divergence between Škoro's worldview and identity and the HDZ's basic principles and values.
Plenković added, however, that while listening to his recent speeches, he noticed that Škoro had taken over the rhetoric of the MOST party and that he equated the HDZ with the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
"That cannot be his own theory. I don't think he is sincere. I have had the feeling the whole time that he is stating somebody else's agenda. Unlike him, I speak my mind and stand by my party programme," said Plenković.
President-elect Zoran Milanović deceived voters and HDZ members back in the 2016 election campaign by saying that the HDZ had leaned to the left, and he did it also in the recent campaign for presidential elections, claimed the HDZ leader.
He added that Milanović had falsely accused him of "having a worse opinion of (Franjo) Tuđman than he does", noting that he had a very high opinion of Tuđman and describing Milanović's claim as "a perfidious deceit... that has caused huge political damage."
Plenković said that the elements used to justify the HDZ's alleged leaning to the left were the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (Marrakesh Treaty) and the ratification of the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul Convention), whereby, he said, his government wanted to strengthen the mechanisms for the prevention of violence against women and domestic violence.
The government also adopted an interpretative statement saying that the Istanbul Convention "in no way introduces gender ideology, which we, too, oppose, into the Croatian legal order," said Plenković.
As for his statement that the cohabitation with President-elect Milanović would be tough, he explained that it meant cohabitation in line with the Constitution between two significantly different political camps.
As for the political future of outgoing President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, PM Plenković said that he was confident that she would make the best possible decision about her future political and professional career, thanking her for everything she had done for the country, notably on the foreign policy front.
More HDZ news can be found in the Politics section.
