ZAGREB, August 13, 2019 – Presidential candidate Dejan Kovač, who is supported by the Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS), said on Tuesday that three years had passed since the Security-Intelligence Agency’s (SOA) report on corruption in the judiciary and that it was time perpetrators were prosecuted and security services enjoyed full autonomy in their work.
Noting that there had been much talk of changing presidential powers recently, Kovac told a news conference that he was not in favour of sudden changes because too much power in one person’s hands in a young democracy could lead to autocracy.
“For a young democracy such as Croatia, it is not good that one person holds too much power in their hands because that can again result in autocratic leaders as those who were in power in the past century and they used the security system for personal benefit,” said Kovač.
He stressed that he would advocate full autonomy for security services and the fight against corruption as the main problem in the country.
“If we look at SOA’s official report of three years ago, we will see that dozens of senior office-holders in the judiciary are connected to criminal circles,” he said.
He wondered what had changed in the past three years, noting that the purpose of security services was not to follow anyone’s lovers but to work for the benefit of the state.
“If 90% of citizens have said that corruption is the main problem in the country, then it has to be dealt with. The president and the prime minister should say why nothing has been done in the three years since SOA’s report,” he said, noting that over the past three years Croatia had failed to prosecute even those officials who had stolen millions of kuna of public money so the question was when it would begin dealing with corruption in the judiciary.
“Corruption needs to be identified. If SOA has identified the problem, the authorities have to be asked why nothing has been done,” Kovač said, noting that SOA had done its part of the job and that it was now up to the president and the prime minister to show the political will to deal with the problem.
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