ZAGREB, 30 April, 2021 - Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman on Friday called on President Zoran Milanović to cease obstructing the process of the appointment of 19 Croatian ambassadors and to go back to the constitutional and legislative frameworks when performing his presidential duties.
Grlić Radman's statement ensued after the dispute between the government and the president Milanović about the process of the appointment of 19 ambassadors and six consuls-general whose current terms will soon expire.
"I think that the president is behaving like the Opposition leader rather than the head of state," said the minister.
Milanović insists on "a fifty to fifty quota" so that he could nominate a half of those appointments and a half can be proposed by the government, claiming this was the practice of in the terms of some of the previous presidents. Insisting on this quota model, Milanović says that this should fend off the attempts by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) attempts to control everything.
The minister explained that he had not known of the fifty to fifty quota in the past.
This is not the proper way. Croatia's diplomacy is one diplomacy which cannot be fragmented, ambassadors do not belong to somebody, they are top-ranking political representatives in host countries and pursue the foreign policies of their countries, Minister Grlić Radman said.
Grlić Radman recalled that on 23 November 2020 during a meeting of the National Security Council, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković presented a list of ambassadorial nominations to President Milanović and a few days later the presidential office's chief of staff said that Milanović did not want to discuss the list containing the nominations and that he insisted on 50 to 50 quota.
"President Milanović is a co-creator of the country's foreign policy and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković wants to discuss this with him, as the list has to be fine-tuned", the minister said today.
He also called on the president to stop using offensive language.
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