Prime Minister and HDZ leader Andrej Plenkovic said on Tuesday that the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) would not support the motion put forward by the Opposition for a commission of inquiry on the latest influence peddling and tender rigging scandal, describing the motion as too broad and imprecise.

“At a first glance, the motion goes beyond frameworks envisaged by the laws,” Plenkovic said after a meeting of his party’s leadership.

Earlier on Tuesday Opposition caucuses presented a draft motion for establishing a parliamentary inquiry commission to be tasked with determining any possible disruption, disturbance or unacceptable influence by authorities on independent investigations and on the prosecution of corruption.

Opposition MPs insist that the future commission’s objective is to establish if there is the influence of political bodies and officials in obstructing independent investigations and court procedures in corruption cases, and cases of organised crime and white-collar crime, the weaknesses in legislative and institutional frameworks in the fight against corruption and omissions in the security and judicial system that regulates classified information related to investigations and court procedures.

Plenkovic said after today’s meeting of the HDZ leadership that perusing through the wording of the draft motion, he got an impression that the motion hinted that as if the prosecutorial and law enforcement authorities “DORH, USKOK and the police were not doing their job, however, they do their job all the time.”

We are running across the unbelievable astonishment of many actors at the fact that those agencies do their job and do that in line with laws, Plenkovic said.

Plenkovic: If I had said 10% of what Milanovic has said, Croatia would have had revolution

Asked by the press whether President Zoran Milanovic might have been behind the idea of launching such parliamentary commission of inquiry, the premier said that if he himself had communicated the messages the way the president has been doing in the last days, “revolution would have been launched in Croatia.”

Had I, in my capacity as the premier and the HDZ leader, said 10% of what Milanovic has said in his comments on the judiciary, the prosecutorial office DORH, the police and all who supported and voted for him, we would have had revolution, Plenkovic said.

Asked whether the reappointment of Dragan Kovacevic, who is currently held in custody on charges of white collar crime and illicit kickbacks, to the position of the director of the state-run oil pipeline operator JANAF actually constituted a threat to the national security, Plenkovic answered in the negative.

The premier explained that all this time there was oil running through those pipelines managed by JANAF and that there were sufficient supplies of oil stored.

The scandal implicating the former JANAF director Kovacevic is about rigging public tenders in order to favour someone and not about national security, according to the premier’s explanation.

Asked by the press whether his cabinet has distanced itself from Milanovic’s public statements, Plenkovic responded that his cabinet dealt with important thing in managing the country, and that he only watches Milanovic’s “performances”.

Plenkovic said that for “pedagogical reasons” the Office of the Chief State Prosecutor (DORH) should explain to the general public what criminal procedures are, following “the total cacophony”.

In this context he also commented that the new SDP leader, Pedja Grbin, who is a lawyer, also showed his astonishment.