ZAGREB, 15 May 2022 - HDZ party leader and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Saturday, on the occasion of the 100th birth anniversary of Croatia's first president Franjo Tuđman, that few 20th century statesmen can measure up to Tuđman in terms of their historical importance for their own nation.
Tuđman's political legacy democracy, freedom and state
Speaking at a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of Tuđman's birth at Zagreb's "Vatroslav Lisinski" concert hall, Plenković said that a free and sovereign Croatia was Tuđman's life's work.
Tuđman's political legacy is what we live today - democracy, freedom and an own state, Plenković said, adding that Croatia's first president believed that people of different worldviews could give a valuable contribution to the accomplishment of Croatian national interests.
He advocated reconciliation of the Croatian people and the unity of Croatians living in Croatia and the expatriate community, and those are the beliefs he built the HDZ on, said Plenković.
"Because of all of that we can freely say that few 20th century statesmen can measure up to him in terms of their historical importance for their own nation," Plenković said.
Today's HDZ has been advocating for six years now Christian Democratic, people's, patriotic and universal humanist values, which are the values Croatians rallied around under Tuđman's leadership, he said.
"His legacy is the foundation of both the home and the foreign policy of today's Croatia, which has a strong pro-European orientation and feeling of belonging to Central and Mediterranean Europe," Plenković said.
Speaking of those who "in the past 20 years have worked on the so-called de-Tuđmanisation, trying to downplay Tuđman's accomplishments and political legacy," Plenković said that they had not succeeded and would not succeed.
The commemoration in a packed Vatroslav Lisinski hall was also addressed by former parliament speaker Vladimir Šeks, who said that those who doubted that the HDZ was continuing Tuđman's policy should look at the gathering to see for themselves what Tuđman meant and still means to the HDZ.
Attending the commemoration were members and leadership of the HDZ, the HDZ government ministers as well as former ministers and party officials - Ljubo Ćesić Rojs, Martina Dalić, Tomislav Ćorić, Josip Aladrović, Milan Kujundžić, Lovro Kuščević, and former HDZ leader Tomislav Karamarko.
Also present were a delegation of the HDZ BiH party, led by Dragan Čović, the president of the Croatian National Council (HNV) in Serbia, Jasna Vojnić, Serbian MP Tomislav Žigmanov, Montenegrin minister Adrijan Vuksanović, and some members of the Tuđman family.
War Veterans Minister Tomo Medved recalled the successful military and police liberation operations of the 1991-95 Homeland War, the crown of which was Operation Storm, saying that Tuđman was a superior military strategist.
Jandroković: It is a perfidious lie that HDZ and Croatia were created by UDBA
Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković said that as the main champions of change and transformation, Tuđman and the HDZ had been constantly under attack by external and internal factors.
"Defamation has been going on the whole time. I heard the other day a perfidious lie, that the HDZ and Croatia were created by UDBA (former Yugoslav security service)," Jandroković said.
UDBA worked and killed for Communist Yugoslavia and Croatia was created by true patriots, defenders, and ordinary people for whom Croatia was above any ideology, said Jandroković.
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