President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic said on Thursday the Croatian public was too preoccupied with scandals, and that the public focus on various affairs was contributing to accelerating population drain.
“One cannot live on scandals. I’m trying to focus on the positives and the work that needs to be done. That means improving the life standard and optimism among the people, and I think this spotlight on affairs, as important as it is in the context of investigations, is not good for the public,” Grabar-Kitarovic said, speaking to Nova TV on Thursday.
Asked about her silence regarding the so-called Text-Message Affair, she said she had spoken to Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandrokovic about it, adding there was no need for her response or for convening the National Security Council.
“I concluded that there was no threat to national security or the stability of institutions at the moment, which I am responsible for according to the Constitution,” she said.
The Text-Message Affair began when Franjo Varga, a computer expert formerly employed by the Croatian police, was arrested in September on suspicion of producing forged text message correspondence for the convicted football mogul Zdravko Mamic and three of Mamic’s co-defendants during their trial for syphoning €15.6 million from the Dinamo Zagreb football club.
Other prominent persons mentioned in the media as Varga’s possible clients were also senior official of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) Milijan Brkic and the party’s former leader, Tomislav Karamarko.
Grabar-Kitarovic said she was worried, as president, about information leaks from state institutions, but that they should be investigated by those same institutions without her involvement.
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Brkic was also named in a scandal involving leaking information about police probes into an elite prostitution ring, after the Nacional weekly had released police reports earlier in October which noted that Brkic, who then served as national deputy police director, had personally notified the people involved in the ring they were under surveillance.
On Friday, Social Democrat MP Pedja Grbin slammed Grabar-Kitarovic’s statements, saying she was more worried about people talking about scandals, than the scandals themselves.
“The President says it is less damaging that the national deputy police director leaks information on police investigations to criminals, than our talking about it. For her it is less of a disaster to wave forged text messages in public, than to reveal (they are fake),” Grbin wrote on his Facebook profile.
Grbin added that was not acceptable to him and that he would not be silenced by “the president or anyone else.”
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