Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that the SDP's motion for a vote of no confidence in his cabinet was a "performance and a short pamphlet", adding that the proposal to dismiss the entire government over one minister would not succeed.

“Given the serious circumstances, namely the corruption scandal involving (ex-health) minister Vili Beros, I understand your initiative and we would probably do the same in your place, so you have hit the bull’s eye. But as far as your final goal is concerned, namely to demand the resignation of the entire government because of the mistake of one member of the government and the people associated with him, I understand you, but that will not succeed. We are even more appalled by this scandal than you are, and we regret it even more than you do,” said the Prime Minister.

“Corruption not only has a name and a surname, but during the tenure of our governments, no one was protected from prosecution. Unlike during your governments, when the then prime minister (Zoran Milanovic) publicly stated that he had insight into the investigations and enquiries, he probably also had room to influence these processes,” Plenkovic said in parliament on Tuesday.

The MPs are discussing no-confidence motion against the Plenkovic government, which was initiated by the SDP following the arrest of former Health Minister Vili Beros, who is accused of being involved in dubious procurement deals for robotic medical equipment for public hospitals.

Plenkovic accuses SDP and opposition of hate speech

During the debate, Plenkovic said that his HDZ party has been subjected to hate speech from the SDP and the opposition for years, which he said has become more intense as the opposition has grown longer.

“They have not offered an alternative to any policy. They are sowing division in society and blindly following (President Zoran) Milanovic, who is a cancer of Croatian political life,” the prime minister said.

Plenkovic expressed regret that the opposition MPs do not want to have a dialogue with the ruling party on a serious issue. He mentioned that the SDP MPs fled the debate on the state budget, refused to negotiate on the constitutional judges and spoke out against helping Ukraine by sending Croatian officers to Germany.

“You will be just another in a long line of defeated SDP leaders,” he said to SDP leader Sinisa Hajdas-Doncic, who recently replaced Pedja Grbin at the head of the party.

He listed what the HDZ government has done for citizens and the economy over the past eight years under difficult conditions and reiterated that the SDP’s policy “amounts to inciting hatred and spreading the false thesis of enslaved institutions.”

“Is the judiciary enslaved? In this ‘enslaved’ judiciary, would judgements be made against the party you hate so much? Would high-ranking officials be prosecuted? I don’t think so. If that were the case, there would be no fight against corruption or no cases at all,” he said.

Plenkovic promises that corruption in the healthcare sector will be comprehensively investigated

With regard to the recent corruption scandal in connection with the manipulation of tenders for medical equipment, Prime Minister Plenkovic said that the government would “do everything” to investigate all cases of corruption in the healthcare sector.

“The scandal was uncovered by chance and now I am very interested in it. Just as I am interested in the time of your government and how the same actors were involved back then,” he said, referring to the businessman Sasa Pozder, from whom Milanovic’s government bought ECMO machines. Pozder, together with former Health Minister Beros, is one of the suspects in the case of manipulation of tenders for medical equipment.

The Minister of Health in Milanovic’s cabinet, Rajko Ostojic, is alleged to have collaborated with Sasa Pozder in the procurement of ECMO machines.

In 2014, the Croatian Association of Hospital Doctors criticised the then Minister of Health Ostojic (SDP) for purchasing twice as many ECMO devices as the country needed and for defrauding the state budget of 2.91 million euros in this way.

“You are hiding behind Milanovic, who violated the constitution during the parliamentary elections, who tried to remove the head of the Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA), who imprisoned the Chief of the General Staff. Why didn’t you launch an initiative to remove him? And these phenomena of the Stockholm syndrome, people who support Milanovic today after having experienced the most brutal insults, represent for me a phenomenon that raises questions about their rationality,” Plenkovic concluded.