Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and MPs of the ruling centre-right HDZ party on Tuesday strongly dismissed and fiercely responded to MP Sandra Bencic's (Mozemo! party) accusations that the prime minister was "the patron of political corruption in Croatia."

“This is a blatant lie and a grave accusation for which I could sue you if you were not protected by parliamentary immunity. You are exaggerating, without a single piece of evidence. It speaks of how impotent, pathetic and pitiful you are,” Plenkovic told Bencic during question time.

He went on to say that neither Bencic nor her colleagues in the opposition knew how to defeat the HDZ and were therefore resorting to a new strategy, in which they insist that he is corrupt.

Plenkovic stressed that his government had delivered on all its election promises, listing the many projects implemented over the past seven years.

MP Bencic objected that three months since facts in the “gas for a cent” affair became publicly known, the director of the state-owned HEP power company is still in his position even though he is politically responsible and should have stepped down.

“By leaving him in office for three months you are making it possible for him to hide evidence or commit new offences,” Bencic said, noting that this was how Plenkovic acted in all of the scandals involving his ministers or executives.

“Until USKOK (anti corruption investigators) or police come to get them, you leave them in positions of power. That very fact, whether you benefit or not, and your attitude to the concept of political responsibility of those who were eventually indicted, makes you the patron of political corruption in Croatia,” Bencic said.

HDZ MPs jumped to Plenkovic’s defence, saying that Bencic was a candidate for prime minister who did not know how to run a small business or fill out her asset declaration, that the Opposition was only good at leveling insults, and that it was incompetent, ignorant, destructive and malevolent.

‘We’ll make decisions when we want to’

Social Democrats MP Davorko Vidovic, too, commented on the HEP affair, asking the prime minister why he was keeping silent about it and expressing concern that it was not an accident but an indication of a much deeper problem.

Plenkovic responded that the opposition was fixated on finding a departure that would overshadow what he described as the most successful HDZ platform.

“I will not let it happen politically, I simply won’t, the theory that someone is stealing something cannot prevail, and it is evident in this context that nobody favoured anyone,” Plenkovic said, repeating that what happened, should not have happened.

“A mistake was made, we will make a decision on it when we want it, not when the Opposition and media want it,” he said.

The HEP affair concerns the sale of surplus gas from HEP’s storage facilities, in the spring of this year, at a price of €0.01 per megawatt hour and an average price of €13. The gas was previously procured by HEP in line with a government decree, aimed at preventing electricity prices to rise to levels unbearable for citizens’ living standards, for as much as €46 per megawatt hour.

Other opposition lawmakers, too, insisted on the government’s political responsibility for the “gas for a cent” scandal.