President Milanović on announcement regarding amendments to Criminal Procedure Act: This is an attack on fundamental constitutional freedoms, confidentiality of procedure should be abolished

The President of the Republic Zoran Milanović said on Wednesday he would pardon the first person to be convicted due to Prime Minister Andrej Plenković’s announcement that leaks from investigations will become a crime, saying this confidentiality of the criminal procedure should be urgently abolished.

“This is a complete reversal of argument. The argument should be that confidentiality of the criminal procedure as it exists currently should be urgently abolished,” said President Milanović who attended a celebration marking National and University Library Day in Zagreb. He asked what value was being protected by that. “The irresponsibility of certain individuals in the State Attorney’s Office (DORH) is being protected who, when it suits them in the interest of criminal prosecution, will disclose that information to the media. When the other side discloses it, it doesn’t suit Plenković and he wants to prosecute,” said the President.

He called on members of Parliament to be dead serious about this matter. “This is an attack on fundamental constitutional freedoms, not on journalists. I will pardon the first person to be convicted, and so far I have not pardoned anyone,” he said. He added that there has been a “judicial and media racket” for years in Croatia. “Sanader got stuck thanks to this law and it seems that he was accused and convicted with reason, but that can’t be an excuse for a law that has characteristics of violence, the secret police, the KGB. Why is the procedure confidential? From whom are we protecting information?” President Milanović asked.

He added that this is not a national security issue, but of one side against the other. “This fellow would prosecute whom? Journalists? What will he do? Place Spanish boots on their feet, torture them, put them on the rack like Matija Gubec? How force somebody to confess? Some journalist will get in trouble for publishing it, who didn’t discover it, but the interested party in the procedure gave the documents to them”, he noted. The President added that it bothers Plenković that others have this information, and not just him, and called that “ultimate cynicism.”

Asked to comment on a statement by the head of the Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA), who said that the SOA is not specifically involved in the case of eight Croats detained in Zambia, he replied: “I don’t know why in a democratic society, where people travel freely, they get involved in various projects with, I believe, good intentions, but carelessly, it is the SOA’s task to protect them. Then it’s too late. The SOA is there to protect the constitutional order,” the President said.

In terms of the appointment of the head of the Military and Security and Intelligence Agency (VSOA), he repeated that it can only be part of a package with the other appointments that have been put on the back burner by Plenković.

Speaking to the press President Milanović said he had been commenting on the war in Ukraine with “horror and fear from day one”. One year since Russia launched an invasion in Ukraine, President Milanović says that he “simply can’t believe it’s happening and that it’s heading in this direction,” adding that for a year he had been saying who was responsible for the conflict and who should have done what, but he will no longer do so.

“Who wants to think understood it, and who has not will repeat the mantras they are copying from The Daily Telegraph, some briefings by the CIA or the Russian FSB”. In this context he also commented on statements by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor who is seen as one of the likeliest opponents to former US president Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination next year.

Criticising President Joe Biden, Republican DeSantis said that the fear of Russia in NATO countries was unfounded because “they’ve shown to be a third-rate military power.” President Milanović wondered what one should conclude from statements by one of the “most highly positioned Americans who has a strong foothold, not so much in the establishment, but in the electorate”?

“I’m the president of a small Croatia. I have been suggesting that in a way, not so forthright, the whole time, in the hope that the conflict will stop because it is awfully dangerous and out of control”, the President said.

He reiterated that the conflict in Ukraine is also “an American war, just as it is Russian” and that an eventual agreement will be reached by Washington and Moscow. “The price is not being paid by the dandies in Florida, the hipsters in New York or the rich Russians, not the richest, but by that unfortunate people and us who are shaking,” President Milanović said, adding that “some people in Europe” approached the conflict in Ukraine “fully charged with emotion and hate.”

President Milanović underlined that he was not talking out of sympathy for anyone, “especially not the Russians.” “Well it’s not I who lamented in Lavrov’s ear like that unfortunate character from the commedia dell’arte Gordan Grlić Radman”. As for the Croatian head of diplomacy and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković in the context of Croatia joining the manufacture of ammunition for Ukraine, he said that they “know the needs of the Ukrainian army”, but not of the Croatian Army since it does not concern them.

Grlić Radman commented this week on the President’s statement that Croatia is in a dire situation in terms of ammunition, saying that he stated it “like that, laconically”. President Milanović wondered how can the Minister be competent in that domain, explaining that he receives information from the General Staff, “people who are responsible for military stocks”, who, according to the head of diplomacy, are lying”.