Social Democratic Party (SDP) parliamentarian Arsen Bauk said on Friday that the seed of hatred Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic was speaking about had been sown by the HDZ-led Patriotic Coalition in 2014 and that the prime minister had until recently claimed that there was no hate speech in Croatia.

The prime minister has finally remembered that there is hate speech, when the problem has knocked at his door, while two months ago, when the Opposition warned about it, he told us that there was no hate speech in Croatia, Bauk said, speaking of Monday’s shooting oustide the government building, hate speech and radicalisation.

Plenkovic is primarily trying to square accounts with political rivals on the right side of the political spectrum, and now and then his comments refer to us, but I can see that he has spared us in his most recent comments, said Bauk.

“He should think back to what we warned him about, starting with the tent (set up by protesting war veterans) in Savska Street and the gas cylinders and the rhetoric used there, and the smashing of bilingual, Latin-Cyrillic signs in Vukovar, and he needn’t look any further for those who sowed the seed of hatred,” said Bauk.

Asked if a five-pointed start on a Rijeka high-rise was an example of left extremism, Bauk said it could be extremism only “if it is installed in such a way to fall on someone.”

“The five-pointed star is not left extremism, it is a symbol under which Rijeka was liberated and joined with Croatia in 1945. It would be extremism to pull it down,” he said.

“Mother who was JNA doctor” figure of speech

Commenting on Plenkovic’s statement that Milanovic had sown the seed of hatred against him back in 2016, Bauk said that Plenkovic was referring to Milanovic’s statement that Plenkovic’s mother had been a doctor (before the 1990s war) working for the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA).

“That was not said in public but at a closed meeting from where it was leaked, so I think Plenkovic mentioned Milanovic just so that his news conference does not end without him mentioning Milanovic.”

“It was a figure of speech… most consider it an unnecessary and unsuccessful figure of speech that cost Milanovic elections, as it did the entire SDP,” said Bauk, adding that the price for that statement was still being paid by the SDP.

But that was not hate speech, he added.

Asked if the target of Monday’s assault was the prime minister, Bauk said that the target was definitely the government building and other state institutions.

“Whether he was the main target is yet to be established,” he said.

PM using Monday attack to square accounts with the Right

Bauk said that Plenkovic was using the attack to square accounts with the Homeland Movement and smaller similar parties.

The PM has also criticised left pundits a bit, which makes his position that he was the target of the attack slightly less convincing, but he has entered a political debate and must be ready to be talked back to, Bauk said, noting that the seed of hatred was sown by the 2014 Patriotic Coalition.

“Plenkovic mentioned former HDZ leader Tomislav Karamarko only indirectly, explaining the difference between the HDZ of 2016 and today’s HDZ. That difference may seem bigger to him than it does to us because we remember people who were HDZ members then and are still members,” he said.

Plenkovic put on party slates many of those HDZ members who were MPs in the last parliament and who were not known for a tolerant rhetoric only because he could win elections with them, said Bauk.