Last week’s scandal that erupted over e-mails showing how a law on the Agrokor state-appointment management was drafted could seriously undermine the government’s credibility, Professor of political science, Nenad Zakosek, told N1.

The leaked e-mails were published by news website Index.hr and offer an insight into the correspondence documenting the drafting of the law that was passed in April 2017 in order to help stave off bankruptcy of the food and retail group Agrokor.

The government depends on the credibility of its messages to the citizens, the Professor said. The argument was that lex Agrokor was necessary to prevent a catastrophe, save jobs, and most people accepted that explanation, he said.

“But we now see it was not done it the right way, that partial interest groups influenced the law and later the state-appointed management. This undermines the government’s credibility,” he said, adding that if it turns out the Prime Minister knew about all this, his own credibility will be seriously questioned.

The affair forced Deputy Prime Minister, and Economy Minister, Martina Dalic, to resign over the leaked correspondence between her and the consultants and lawyers who had worked on drafting the controversial law.

“For quite some time I have not seen an official communicating as bad as Martina Dalic did. She avoided questions and was then caught lying,” he said, adding that the real problem was not the PR strategy.

“The problem is Agrokor’s business model of small clans Todoric benefited from and now you want to solve the problem of the biggest company in Croatia by using the same methods, by consulting clans. It should have been transparent from the very beginning,” he said.

Most important will be if it turns out the Prime Minister knew about all of this but claims he didn’t, he said.

“I don’t know how he would handle that burden,” Zakosek said.

The professor said he was surprised by some of the speeches Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic gave because it appeared he does not understand why people don’t believe him.

“If it turns out someone benefited substantially from information he got during the drafting phase, that’s a criminal act,” Zakosek noted.

The call for returning the honorariums is just a bad PR, he sad.