Zagreb mayoral candidate Tomislav Tomasevic said on Wednesday it was not true that city programmes for war veterans would be halted once his We Can! party came to power but that rather city offices would be merged to improve coordination of city programmes.

“As regards accusations that programmes intended for war veterans would stop if we come to power, I can say that that is not true. I have said on more than one occasion that we will merge offices, I was not speaking about the cancellation of programmes, because I do not know of any other capital city in the world that has 27 departments,” Tomaševic told a news conference.

On being given police protection

Asked by reporters if he had been given police protection, Tomasevic told reporters to ask police about that because security assessment was not what he and his colleagues did.

“We have been in touch with police regarding security risks. But the police are the ones to make decisions on the matter, and I cannot speak on their bahalf about that,” Tomasevic said.

Asked about the Otvoreno political programme on Croatian Television of Tuesday, in which he faced off against his rival in the 30 May runoff for Zagreb mayor, Miroslav Skoro of the Homeland Movement, and if he would sue him for false claims, Tomasevic said that he was focused on his campaign now.

“That did not happen only yesterday. We are talking about an unbelievable misrepresentation of facts, someone is accusing you of covert campaign financing while at the same time they report zero donations,” said Tomasevic.

He noted that the internet was full of paid advertisements with false information on the We Can! platform and his family.

He added that Zeljka Markic of the In the Name of the Family civil society group yesterday made one more slanderous claim against him, saying that he had a gross salary of 25,000 kuna in a nongovernmental organisation.

“She should say which NGO she was referring to and when it happened,” he said, noting that an unprecedented hate-mongering campaign was under way on the political scene in Croatia.