ZAGREB, November 3, 2018 – Croatian President Kolinda-Grabar Kitarović has said in an interview with the Split-based Slobodna Dalmacija newspaper that Croatia needs consensual development strategy and that resolute reforms are required even at the expense of losing the elections.
The politician who is ready to undertake resolute and also unpopular reforms, even at the expense of losing the next elections, would give the biggest contribution to the prosperity of Croatia,” Grabar-Kitarović said in the interview which the daily published on Saturday.
She went on to say that Croatia should adopt a development strategy on which a consensus must be reached. That strategy supported by all political parties is to be about the course which Croatia should take in 10, 15 or 50 years, according to the president. “Where can the national shipbuilding industry find its place in that, how can it be competitive? What is about other industries and branches? Where are we going to put the emphasis on?” the president said citing the issues of demography, labour market, pension and healthcare system and education.
The president criticised the government for having “lost too much time on dealing with the Agrokor problems”. Therefore, there is an impression that other reform possibilities have been pushed to the back burner, Grabar-Kitarović added.
The president called on the government to work more on tax reforms and thus on enabling a higher rise in salaries. She says she is sure that the emigrations from the country will stop if the average monthly pay is about a thousand euro.
She went on to say that she is not for any changes in the President’s powers and added that she believes that the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) led by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković will support her if she decides to rerun for office. Her five-year presidency term expires in January 2020.
She recalled that she had come from that party adding that she also believed that she “behaves as an above-party president that has never favoured any party”. “I was elected by over one million and a hundred thousand citizens and I am responsible to them just as to those who did not vote for me,” she said.
Grabar-Kitarović said that she was “really concerned over the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina”. As for the Croatia-Serbia relations, she said that she felt disappointed by a lack of progress in addressing the issue of those who went missing during the 1991-1995 war of independence. “I don’t know how Mr Aleksandar Vučić feels but I personally feel very disappointed at the failure to reach progress in solving the issue of the missing people.”
During his visit to Zagreb in mid-February this year, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said at a news conference at resident Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović’s office in Zagreb that he would do his best to help find the war missing. Vučić paid a two-day official visit to Croatia then at the invitation of his Croatian counterpart Grabar-Kitarović.
For more on relations between Croatia and Serbia, click here.
