President Milanović Attends Municipality of Plaški Day Ceremony
The President of the Republic Zoran Milanović today attended a special session of the Municipality of Plaški Municipal Council, held on the occasion of Municipality Day, where he extended congratulations to the residents, telling them that they chose the right date to celebrate. “It is on that date, the 12th of October, that the second session of ZAVNOH (State Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Croatia) took place, when Croatia started to resemble what it eventually became today. Despite all its shortcomings, it is still a healthy and respectable state, our Croatian state,” President Milanović said at the special session.
Speaking about the history, which is closely connected to the Day of the Municipality of Plaški, President Milanović said the following: “If there is a sunny side and something bright in the history of relations between the Croats and Serbs, the modern Croat and Serb nation, then it is here – the sunny side of (Mount) Kapela. This is the sunny side of the relations between two peoples, who understood each other, persecuted each other, did bad things, good things, fought, killed, burned, and did this recently.” The President of the Republic believes that the session of ZAVNOH 80 years ago, which took place in Plaški, was the most wonderful moment of that “difficult and complicated history.”
President Milanović also said that ZAVNOH – although it was initiated in times of war out of the need to form some kind of government and without real democratic legitimacy – had sown and left a healthy and noble seed of relations between two complex peoples who lived together in one area. “Eighty years ago, people here built the foundations of a building that would be called the People’s Republic of Croatia, for which it was decided at the next AVNOJ (Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia) session that it would, along with the other republics, join Yugoslavia, which would be created after the war,” said President Milanović.
“Decisions were made here on the return of those parts of Croatia that were occupied and seized by Italy, the Croatian Littoral and its coastline, on including Istria in the composition of Croatia,” President Milanović also reminded. Unfortunately, those glittering moments in the relations between Croats and Serbs 80 years ago “melted like a tear in the rain and were followed by a great deal of tears, misfortunes and misunderstandings,” said the President, referring to the events that took place 30 years ago in the Homeland War. “It will take more understanding, work and effort both in educating and in telling the narrative, because this is all one big story and it is important that the truth is told, and that it is told with good intentions and an open heart,” President Milanović concluded.
Also speaking at the Municipality of Plaški Day ceremony, apart from President Milanović, were the President of the Municipal Council Ivica Klečina, Head of the Municipality Pero Damjanović, Mayor of Ogulin Dalibor Domitrović, and Karlovac County Prefect and delegate of the Speaker of the Croatian Parliament Martina Furdek-Hajdin.
President Milanović was accompanied in Plaški by the Adviser to the President of the Republic for Human Rights and Civil Society Melita Mulić.
PHOTO: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia / Tomislav Bušljeta