President of the Republic Nominates Zlata Đurđević for President of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia
The President of the Republic Zoran Milanović nominated Zlata Đurđević, professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb, as his candidate for president of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia. He confirmed this to journalists on Monday in Petrinja.
“Professor Đurđević has accepted to be a candidate. She is a complete person, independent, a University professor in Zagreb with a brilliant career”, he said, explaining why he nominated her. Regarding the Speaker of the Croatian Parliament’s announcement whereby he would not table President Milanović’s proposal if the candidate does not submit her candidacy through the public call for applications, President Milanović reminded that former Prime Minister Sanader made a decision to remove an Ustasha plaque by directly applying the Constitution and it did not matter to Gordan Jandroković at the time.
“That was then, now it’s different. Nowadays you first adopt a law that is unconstitutional, and I’ll get to that later, and you say you won’t table it (the president’s proposal). The goal here is to prevent a person with integrity from being elected president of the Supreme Court, a person who is not part of the clique, a group of people that will not allow any changes to happen. Ms. Zlata Đurđević is first-rate. The Government has nominated her for international positions. If she is good for the International Court of Justice, then she is good for a Croatian court. We currently have a candidate, so let’s see what they’ll think of next. It’s possible that my proposal will be put in a drawer. Legal and political violence of all kinds is possible. They like to call this rule of law. That’s not rule of law. Rule of law doesn’t mean to keep amending laws and adopting unconstitutional ones”, President Milanović noted.
Commenting on the petition to rule on the constitutionality of the Law on Courts that has been filed, President Milanović warns that “in this way a possibility has been given to the HDZ’s power elite in the Constitutional Court to make the decision that they want”. At this moment the decision is being coordinated between Vladimir Šeks, his best man Miroslav Šeparović and Snježana Bagić, his closest associate who has been politically appointed along with him to the Constitutional Court, the President of the Republic warned, indicating the absolutistic powers of the president of the Constitutional Court.
“The President of the Constitutional Court receives petitions, lawsuits, he decides when a case will be reviewed. Therefore, he doesn’t answer to any judge, he doesn’t ask their opinion, he assigns it to a trusted person. Then the decision is written by advisers, whose names you don’t even know, those are people of confidence. You’ve seen how decisions are made in the Constitutional Court. The speed at which Šeks’s best man and former director of the intelligence service during the HDZ wants, they are assigned to judge-rapporteurs whom he chooses. It is a clear exclusive party affair. And they make the decisions public when it suits them. In this case, the remaining eleven judges will be informed two days, and that will be when it suits the HDZ, Šeks and Plenković. Then they will announce the decision by saying – the law is constitutional. That’s the rule of law”?”, President Milanović asked.
The President of the Republic repeated that he will not give up on his proposal for president of the Supreme Court. “My candidate is professor Zlata Đurđević and that’s that. I don’t know what could happen, what could tarnish her career or be disclosed for me to change my mind. I won’t change my mind, she’s my candidate”, he underlined.