The GONG NGO said on Wednesday Ivan Turudic's choice for the State Attorney General is a continuation of the state capture, adding that "the longer the HDZ party and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic are in power, the weaker the rule of law and liberal democracy in Croatia."

“Instead of an independent and impartial person, Attorney General Turudic is close to the HDZ, he is friends with Uskok defendants to whom he gives information from the investigation and to whom he ‘owns’ certain judges, which is a red flag about the state of the judiciary,” GONG said.

The state attorney general’s office should protect the interests of the Republic of Croatia, and GONG wonders if this is possible when the head of that agency is a compromised person, “appointed to make another independent institution hostage to the government of Andrej Plenkovic.”

According to GONG, Prime Minister Plenkovic is a politician who wanted to change the HDZ, but not only did he not change his party, but the achieved standards of the rule of law in Croatia have backslid.

In doing so, they refer to recent opinion polls that analyse trust in institutions and continuously show that the judiciary, along with political parties, is the institution that Croatian citizens trust the least.