ZAGREB, June 2, 2020 – President Zoran Milanovic said on Tuesday that Josipa Rimac, a former state secretary arrested in the wind park scandal, had once said that he was not a Croat, adding that he cannot believe that someone who is a state secretary can behave like an “agent for an American investment company.”
Asked if he was surprised by the wind park scandal and its extent, Milanovic said that while he was prime minister, Rimac, a former Knin mayor, had said that he was not a Croat and that he did not love his people.
“Then we paid a couple of million kunas for a monument at the Knin railway station. My government did not commission it. We financed it with a feeling of joy and patriotism. Then she brought those troublemakers to Knin and now she is in investigative custody. It is unbelievable that the state secretary in the Public Administration Ministry has the nerve to behave like an agent for an American investment company,” he said.
Responding to a reporter’s remark that Environment and Energy Minister Tomislav Coric shifted the responsibility for the wind park scandal onto his government because all agreements regarding renewable energy sources were signed during his term in office, Milanovic said that Coric was not telling the truth.
Milanovic said that at the end of his term, the then relevant minister, Ivan Vrdoljak, adopted “some sort of decision,” after which the government led by Tihomir Oreskovic was in power for a brief time and then came the current government which, Milanovic said, has had four and a half years to “nip that in the bud.”
“If a minister had some authority in my government and could make some decisions on his own, I do not know about that,” he claimed and explained that at one stage wind parks were interesting for investors because enterprises were stimulated to invest in that form of energy production.
With regard to the March for Life is held on the day of election silence, Milanovic said that was an initiative that advocated the fight against abortion and is led by a woman who previously worked for Human Rights Watch, adding that he has a problem with the concept of election silence in any case.
“That doesn’t mean anything. I think that lady is not a candidate on any election slate. It’s all the same to me, the people will decide. That might bother some people and they will go to the polls and vote for someone else or maybe they didn’t plan to vote at all,” he said.
