Former Health Minister Milan Kujundzic, who was sacked by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Tuesday, is the 14th minister so far to leave the government in little over three years since Plenkovic's cabinet was formed in October 2016. Most of them had to step down amid scandals related to unclear sources of their personal wealth and real estate, state agency Hina reported on Tuesday.

Apart from Plenkovic, who is also the leader of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party, only six out of the original 20 cabinet ministers are still in government.

The first ministers who were sacked were three ministers from the conservative populist Most party, HDZ’s junior coalition partner after the September 2016 election, after they had voted against rejecting a no confidence motion against Finance Minister Zdravko Maric in April 2017.

The motion was submitted by opposition MPs over accusations for conflict of interest and inaction which they claimed had contributed to the collapse of the major private-owned food and retail giant Agrokor. Maric later barely survived the vote in parliament – the vote was split right down the middle 75-75, with one MP deciding not to cast his vote, which led the proposition to fall short by just one vote to win majority in the 151-seat legislature.

The sackings led to the forming of a new parliament majority in which HDZ partnered with the liberal People’s Party (HNS), which meant changes at the helm of seven cabinet departments.

HNS appointed Construction Minister, Predrag Stromar, while Blazenka Divjak took charge of the Science and Education Ministry, replacing HDZ’s Pavo Barisic, a university professor of philosophy, who had been ousted in parliament amid media accusations of alleged self-plagiarism in a scholarly research paper. Five other HDZ ministers were reshuffled at the time as well.

Following Plenkovic’s decision to enter coalition with the liberal HNS party, HDZ’s Foreign Minister, Davor Ivo Stier, considered one of the most prominent members of the party’s ultraconservative faction, resigned in June 2017 after only eight months in office. Plenkovic, considered a centrist, appointed Marija Pejcinovic-Buric to replace Stier.

In May 2018 Economy Minister Martina Dalic handed in her resignation amid the so-called Hotmail Affair, when excerpts of her e-mail correspondence with consultants hired to draft the controversial Lex Agrokor surfaced in the media. The law, designed to save Agrokor from bankruptcy by putting it under government-appointed management, had been hastily passed by parliament in April 2017. She was replaced by Darko Horvat.

The next major government reshuffle occurred in July 2018. Media allegations of non-transparent property dealings led to the sacking of four more ministers – Agriculture Minister, Tomislav Tolusic, Regional Development Minister, Gabrijela Zalac, Public Administration Minister, Lovro Kuscevic, and State Assets Minister, Goran Maric. Social Policy Minister, Nada Murganic, was also replaced. All were replaced by new officeholders from the ruling HDZ.

During that reshuffle, Pejcinovic-Buric, who was in the meantime elected Secretary-General of the inter-governmental human rights watchdog Council of Europe, was replaced as Foreign Minister by Gordan Grlic-Radman.

According to the latest reports, Kujundzic, sacked on Tuesday, will be replaced by the current deputy minister, Vili Beros, an accomplished neurosurgeon.