ZAGREB, January 7, 2020 – President-elect Zoran Milanović said on Tuesday in his first public address after Sunday’s election that he had spoken with Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and incumbent President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović as well as other officials from Croatia, Europe and the rest of the world, who congratulated him on his election as Croatia’s president.
“Both (PM Plenković) and Mrs Kitarović phoned me. I spent the day yesterday responding to messages of congratulation, talking to people from Croatia, Europe and the rest of the world,” Milanovic told reporters outside his home.
He also commented on PM Plenković’s statement that the cohabitation between them would be hard, saying that he did not know what that meant.
“I said that we would be the best of friends, as much as that is possible in politics. I don’t know what hard cohabitation means; we should look it up in the Constitution to see what it means.”
He went on to say that he would support Grabar-Kitarović if she decides to continue her diplomatic career. “Yes, I will. She is not responsible for any criminal offences and she was president,” he said.
Milanović said that he had spoken on the phone on Monday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and that he had not spoken with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić.
“It doesn’t matter, everything I said was correct fact-wise, this concerns relations between states and we will do our job to the extent a president can,” he explained.
As for the return of a bust of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito to the president’s office, which has been speculated about as one of his possible first moves, Milanović said that he had not thought about that at all.
Tito’s bust was removed from the president’s office by Grabar-Kitarović at the start of her term.
“Pantovčak (the president’s office) is not a museum, there were four Croatian presidents before me, and as for the time before that, we could go all the way back to King Tomislav,” said Milanović.
As for his future advisors, he said that he would try to have the best possible advisors, but he could not say if former Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA) chief Dragan Lozančić would be one of them.
“That needs to be seen. My opinion about him is well known. Apart from being an advisor to the deputy prime minister (Davor Božinović), he is also active as an instructor at international institutes across the region, so he has two careers. He has a very good reputation and the question is, whether being my advisor would be worth his while,” said Milanović.
He said that he did not intend to move his office across the country, and that he would consult with the government before launching his future initiatives.
“I will not ambush them because I was on the other side of the fence and I know very well what it is like when someone plays dirty,” he said.
Commenting on the small number of votes he won in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he said: “If I were to take that personally, I would never go there. Regardless of the votes and the money, I will do my job dauntlessly.”
Milanović also said that he did not know when his inauguration would be and that his team was in charge of the inauguration procedure.
More news about Zoran Milanović can be found in the Politics section.
