Some of the parliamentary opposition parties on Wednesday criticised the appointment of former deputy prime minister Martina Dalic as the chair of the management board of the Podravka food company.

“Podravka today is a classic example of political appointment where it is not clear according to which criteria the chair of a management board is appointed,” Social Democratic Party (SDP) MP Misel Jaksic said.

Jaksic said he was unhappy because none of the company’s people took its helm. “As if the people who have been building the company for 70 years know nothing about it and don’t know how to run it,” he noted.

Jaksic wondered if the prime minister had decided to become “the chief personnel officer” in companies in which the government had a stake and “why do we need pension funds that hold 52 percent of shares in Podravka?”

Jaksic said that Dalic had never worked in the food sector and that the decisive factor for her appointment was her membership of the HDZ party.

Dalija Oreskovic of the Centre party also criticised the prime minister for installing Dalic as Podravka’s CEO despite the fact that the pension funds and other private owners held 75 percent of shares in the company.

“The power and role of the government in a company that is two-thirds privately owned can be seen on the package of its product Vegeta which displays the prime minister’s image,” launched to mark his visit to the company, she said.

Oreskovic concluded by saying that a country in which the government decides on who will run private companies does not have a free market.

Branko Bacic of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) said he was surprised that none of the opposition groups in parliament commented on a disgraceful incident that had occurred on Saturday when four Socialist members of the European Parliament attempted to cross the Croatian border outside a border crossing point in violation of Croatian law, thus trying to discredit Croatia and its police.

“It is regrettable that this attempt was made in consultation with the SDP. The question arises as to whose national interests the SDP is protecting,” Bacic said, adding that he had expected that parties portraying themselves as sovereignist would react to this incident.

He went on to say that the opposition did not care about the reform of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce either because they would have proposed a more detailed amendment to the law than the “20-odd words” used by the Bridge party in its proposal.