Social Democrat MP Domagoj Hajdukovic on Wednesday commented on the rhetoric of President Zoran Milanović after the government said that the president was overstepping his constitutional powers.

“The president should play the role of public conscience, drawing attention to certain problems and raising issues that need to be raised. Some of the issues that he has raised are good indeed and no one else on the political scene has had the courage to raise them. However, the way he does it, his rhetoric, eventually ruins everything he wants to say,” Hajdukovic said.

He said that one example was the electoral law in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the problems faced by the Croats in that country. “But you don’t insist on that by threatening other EU allies and member states through ultimatums and by saying that everyone who thinks otherwise is a traitor,” he added.

‘Finland and Sweden would be an important addition to NATO’

Hajdukovic said he would not go so far as to claim that Milanovic “is playing for Russia.”

“I would only say that sometimes he is clumsy in articulating what he wants to say. However, I deeply disagree with this blackmail move. Finland and Sweden have very good armed forces and would be an important addition to NATO. What they are doing now is the consequence of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and not of Western pressure or the electoral law in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he said.

Asked if the president was putting pressure on the judiciary when he called on the State Attorney’s Office (DORH) to jail the defence minister and if the prime minister was doing the same when he called the attorney general, Hajdukovic said that both should refrain from referring to DORH. “They should let DORH do its job. I haven’t heard either of them criticise the shortage of staff and money or the working conditions at DORH.”