ZAGREB, August 21, 2019 – Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader Davor Bernardić on Wednesday stated that the police investigation into the affairs of former administration minister MP Lovro Kuščević (HDZ), confirms that Prime Minister Andrej Plenković should have replaced Kuščević earlier due to serious suspicion of corruption.
Bernardić underscored that because of cases like this SDP insists on implementing its anti-corruption plan against “ministers and state officials becoming richer while people are emigrating from Croatia due to the poor standard or have to dig in dumpsters.” It is absurd that Kuščević was in fact rewarded by being sent back to his seat in parliament regardless of the scandal surrounding him.
“Plenković has to realise that he has to act as a prime minister and protect the interests of Croatian citizens and not behave as an errand boy for the European People’s Party,” Bernardić said.
Reporters were interested in Bernardić’s opinion regarding media headlines that President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović had accepted a suggestion by Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić not to keep using the expression “Great Serbia aggression,” with Bernardić saying that it was without a doubt that an aggression had occurred against Croatia.
“If the allegations are correct that the president listened to that advice to not speak about the truth in the Homeland War, then it is up to the president to make a statement about that,” said Bernardić and added that it would be interesting to see what the prime minister and leader of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) had to say about that as “she will be their presidential candidate.”
Asked how much the SDP intends to invest in the presidential campaign, Bernardić said that Zoran Milanović would have a very modest campaign.
“SDP will show that it doesn’t squander money, but acts rationally. Zoran Milanović will be the next president of Croatia and we believe that we can restore its reputation and dignity. The president’s office is an exceptionally important institution. In order to restore trust in institutions we have to restore trust in the president’s office, which has been lost for now,” he said.
Bernardić supported workers in the health and education sectors who are demanding a wage increase. “Wages in the health and education sectors are too low and need to be increased. It is not clear why the government has for a year been ignoring our proposals to increase wages for everyone, why the rich are being given tax reliefs, why the prime minister and parliament speaker’s wages are being increase while at the same time wages are not being increased for those who are exposed the most to migration challenges and they are physicians, pharmacists and IT experts,” Bernardić underlined.
More SDP news can be found in the Politics section.
