The incumbent president and presidential candidate of the SDP party, Zoran Milanovic, said that "something is rotten" in the healthcare system, namely a conflict of interest, and emphasised the need to protect the public healthcare system from people who want to enrich themselves personally.

“There is something rotten in the health system – a conflict of interest. Those who work in the public sector in the morning, where health services are not sufficiently accessible to all, should not do the same work privately for money in the afternoon,” Milanovic wrote on Facebook on Thursday.

He pointed out that most of the most developed democracies have public healthcare systems that are based on solidarity and provide care to all who need it.

“Croatia also has such a system, but it must be protected from the encroachments of individuals who seek profit while continuing to receive state subsidies, like this protégé of (Prime Minister) Plenkovic,” Milanovic said, referring to his challenger Dragan Primorac.

“This kind of people only strive for influence, money and status. They are parasites who want to get rich at the expense of the state,” Milanovic added. He is running for a second term in the run-off election scheduled for 12 January.

Primorac replies: Slacker dares to speak out against entrepreneurship

HDZ party’s presidential candidate Dragan Primorac responded to Milanovic’s accusations regarding the private healthcare system, saying that the “slacker and accidental president” dares to speak against entrepreneurship due to his own insecurities.

Primorac posted on Facebook that Milanovic “belittles the private healthcare system.”

“The slacker and accidental president, who has lived on the state all his life and knows nothing about economics, because otherwise he would know that his salary is secured by the private sector, dares to speak against entrepreneurship and the private sector,” Primorac wrote.

He went on to say that Milanovic obviously has insecurities about entrepreneurship, as he briefly tried his hand as a consultant after losing a parliamentary election. “And we know that he mostly got by on the minimum wage. No one who works and earns in the market can vote for this lazy person.”