Opposition Homeland Movement (DP) leader Miroslav Skoro on Monday apologised for having been a member of the HDZ party and HDZ MP in 2007, noting in a message to PM and current HDZ leader Andrej Plenkovic that a leader must be ready to assume responsibility for his own and his associates' actions.

Skoro made the statement at a news conference he held to comment on the ruling in the Fimi Media case.

Former PM and HDZ leader Ivo Sanader was sentenced pending appeal to eight years in prison, former HDZ treasurer Mladen Barisic and accountant Branka Pavosevic were also sentenced to prison, while the HDZ was fined HRK 3.5 million and ordered to pay HRK 14.6 million into the state budget in this case in which Sanader and the other defendants were charged with siphoning around HRK 70 million from state-owned companies and institutions through the Fimi Media marketing agency, some of which allegedly ended up in the party’s slush fund.

In a comment on the ruling PM and HDZ leader Andrej Plenkovic said last Friday that the party would appeal against the ruling and that there was no collective responsibility on the part of its current leadership.

“I apologise for having been a member of the HDZ who sat in the parliament at the time, as well as for not taking a single lipa of my salary but giving all the money I earned for an intensive care unit in Osijek. I also apologise for returning my seat after eight months, for not trading in it,” said Skoro.

He noted that he was willing to assume responsibility for “his sins” but that he could not accept irresponsible individuals’ downplaying their own responsibility, dividing people and seeing themselves as the only measure of value.

“A ship’s captain assumes responsibility and does not shun it. The ship Plenkovic took over is the legal successor to everything that had been going on,” Skoro said, calling on the prime minister and other politicians to assume responsibility.

Asked if he apologised for having visited Barisic’s office in the Customs Administration, Skoro, a singer-turned-politician, explained that he had gone there to arrange a gig at an event for customs officers and that he had invoices to prove that.

With regard to the Vukovar Remembrance Procession, Skoro said that one should listen to epidemiologists and that he would visit Vukovar tomorrow with his wife, and that depending on protocol, he would visit the eastern city on Wednesday, on Vukovar Remembrance Day, as well.

Remembrance procession is for victims, not politicians

As for whether representatives of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) should be in the procession in Vukovar, Skoro said that question should be put to them, stressing that Vukovar Remembrance Day was a day for the victims and not politicians.

“I think that the remembrance procession was meant to commemorate the victims and whether representatives of this or that party will come is up to them,” he said.

As for the conflict between PM Plenkovic and President Zoran Milanovic, Skoro said that there was no conflict between them.

“They are friends, they have known each other from Brussels, Zagreb, they started working at the (foreign) ministry together,” Skoro said in his first address to the public after being in self-isolation due to infection with coronavirus.