Minister Bozinovic has gone from ‘just’ being the Minister of the Interior to a true household name ever since the coronavirus pandemic broke out earlier this year and the staff members of the National Civil Protection Headquarters began with their daily briefings to the press.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 8th of July, 2020, HDZ is close to forming a new government, but they don’t have an easy path ahead of them. This summer’s economic forecasts, the first after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, have seen the European Commission additionally increase its estimate of the decline of the Croatian economy to 10.8 percent this year, predicting a partial recovery and growth of 7.5 percent next year.
Let us not forget, just because we seem to have a better handle on the situation now, the coronavirus epidemic is still going on. Minister Bozinovic spoke on RTL Danas (Today) about everything that awaits Croatia, but also about HDZ’s agreements behind closed doors.
“All minority representatives said they’d support Andrej Plenkovic as the prime minister-designate of the new government. Of course, our partners from the previous government, HNS and Mr. Cacic, have 76 ‘hands’, and signatures are being collected, I think it’s all a technical matter,” said Minister Bozinovic, adding that he will visit the President of the Republic as soon as the conditions for that are created: ”Very soon, I think it’s realistic for it to happen next week. Maybe this one too,”
Two questions now arise:
Is there a possibility for making sure there are a smaller number of participants at weddings given the current ‘boom’ in newly infected people having attended them and coronavirus’ apparent love of spreading indoors and in close quarters? On top of that, the elections are now over, will there be stricter anti-epidemic measures introduced?
“They [measures] have nothing to do with the elections, we can see that there are hotspots that are local and we’re extinguishing them locally. On the one hand, the battle with the virus can be won easily if we adhere to the measures, especially during the summer,” Minister Bozinovic replied.
The Minister of Health, Vili Beros, mentioned that the possibility of banning weddings is also an option which remains “on the table”.
”It’s possible that we’ll need to reduce the number of participants in wedding ceremonies in some phases. It isn’t easy to achieve a balance of joy on the one hand and prevent the spread of the virus on the other. All we’re doing now is trying to influence people to avoid situations where the virus is spreading.
It would be too radical to start again with the measures that were in place back in March and April. There will be some intermediate measures like the ones we introduced at nightclubs. There are constant inspections and we see that there are no new appearances [of the new coronavirus] coming from nightclubs. As for weddings, we may be forced to make sure there are a smaller number of participants,” the pair concluded.
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