ZAGREB, February 16, 2019 – President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović admitted on Saturday that she was wrong to say that the salute “For the Homeland Ready”, used by the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime in Croatia during World War II, was a Croatian historical greeting, adding that her point was that the salute as such was “compromised and unacceptable”.
Grabar-Kitarović made the statement while responding to questions from the press after recapitulating the four years of her term in office so far. She said she was wrong about the controversial salute because her advisers had told her that it was a historical greeting. “I accept what historians have said, that it is not a historical Croatian greeting. But the point of my statement was not that part of the sentence, but that it is compromised and unacceptable,” the president said.
Asked to comment on the fact that some people in Croatia have been sentenced to prison for what they said, as is the case with Zoran Erceg who called the first Croatian president Franjo Tuđman a war criminal, Grabar-Kitarović said that freedom of speech must be absolutely guaranteed and that no one should be punished for what they say.
“Freedom of speech must be absolutely guaranteed, and it must stop where hate speech begins. I respect President Tuđman immensely, but I allow that there are people in Croatia who do not share my opinion and they should have the right to speak and think freely and should not be penalised for that,” the president said.
She said she was ready to attend the annual memorial ceremony in Jasenovac, the site of an Ustasha-run WWII concentration camp. “If a consensus is reached for all of us to go there, the government, parliament and everyone else, so that there won’t be several ceremonies, I am ready to go to the official ceremony and make a speech if necessary, even though I think no speeches are necessary at places like that because victims speak for themselves. But for the sake of achieving unity and resolving problems of the past that still burden our reality, I am ready to take that step so that we can better dedicate ourselves to the future.”
Grabar-Kitarović did not confirm that she would run for a second term as president, saying that she would announce her decision “when the time comes.” She said that regardless of whether she would run or not, she hoped that the citizens would acknowledge what she had done during her term and that she would “not join any camps in that regard.”
“I have my own specific ethic and convictions, but I am undoubtedly the president of all Croatian citizens and have acted like one in these past four years,” she said after reporters asked her if the right would punish her for not being critical of the government any more.
Grabar-Kitarović said that during her term she had treated all three governments equally. “I praised them when praise was due, and whenever I thought I should draw attention to a certain problem, I would do so. That’s my duty and I will continue to abide by it.”
“Of course, I was the HDZ candidate, but I did not make any concessions to the HDZ and its governments because of that, nor do I think they expected me to,” she added.
Reporters reminded the president of the promise she had made on the night of her election victory that Croatia would be among the most advanced countries of the world and asked her whether she would deliver on her promise.
The president said she still believed in what she had said then, but noted that she never said when that would happen. “I never said when because that is impossible to predict, but I did say that we have all the potential for it.”
She said that economic indicators now were much better than four years ago, citing economic growth, lower public debt, a balanced government budget, and a better credit rating.
“All these are excellent indicators. However, what I want is for this to be reflected in the accounts of Croatian citizens and their standard of living. I want people to live better and to be able to plan more in advance,” the president said.
Until progress has been made in shedding light on the fate of missing persons from the 1991-1995 war, there will be no reciprocal visit to Serbia, President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović said at a press conference in Zagreb on Saturday, emphasising that she did not think that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s visit to Croatia last year was a mistake.
“I don’t think it’s a mistake to talk to anyone, even if at that time that was not productive,” Grabar-Kitarović said of Vučić’s visit to Croatia in February 2018. She added that after that visit a lot of things had been done that had improved the living conditions of the Croatian community in Serbia.
Grabar-Kitarović said that the issue of missing persons from the war was very important to her and that she had believed before Vučić’s visit that more would be done about it, but that in the end no results were achieved. “Until progress has been made in resolving the issue of missing Croatian soldiers and civilians, there will be no reciprocal visit to Serbia,” the Croatian president said.
More news on President Grabar-Kitarović can be found in the Politics section.
