ZAGREB, Oct 15, 2020 – Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Thursday that it should be looked into whether he personally was the target of Monday’s attack on the government headquarters, criticising right-wing politicians and media for spreading hatred and aggression against him.
Speaking to Croatian reporters in Brussels ahead of a two-day EU summit, Plenkovic said that the attacker who shot and seriously wounded a police officer guarding the government building in St Mark’s Square in Zagreb on Monday did not get this idea on his own, but was prompted by the atmosphere in society created by hatemongers.
“It is those who advocate hate speech, and here I have in mind the Homeland Movement and all its factions. The Croatian public should be reminded that it is they, together with Bridge, who were saying during the election campaign that they wanted to go with the HDZ but not with Andrej Plenkovic as the prime minister and HDZ leader. They spread their incendiary messages through different media and different television shows, such as Bujica and Hrvatski Tjednik (weekly) as two blatant examples. For all these years they have been spreading hate speech against me personally and they may have encouraged that young man to carry out this attack, which is an attempted murder with elements of a terrorist act, on the government building,” Plenkovic said.
On Monday, 22-year-old Danijel Bezuk shot and seriously wounded a police officer guarding the government building, and committed suicide shortly afterwards. Investigators are still trying to establish the motive of the attack.
Plenkovic called out Homeland Movement MPs Ivan Penava and Karolina Vidovic Kristo, as well as the party’s leader Miroslav Skoro, over their statements on the shooting incident.
He said that Skoro would have been better off if he had stayed in the music business than engaged in politics “because now he comes across as an unconvincing clown.”
“I know very well how to fight against those who spread hatred and that’s why I marked them out before the elections as not being partners for cooperation,” he added.
Plenkovic also criticised left commentators for not finding it necessary to point out the difference between the HDZ of before 2016 and today’s HDZ. “They should ask themselves why this transformation has come about and who carried it out.”
Responding to a reporter’s remark that he too had appeared as a guest on the Bujica television talk show, Plenkovic said that the situation was different then.
“The circumstances were different than they are today. I stand behind everything I said. At that point I was not the HDZ president, which is not irrelevant. Look at the HDZ today, the election results and what was before. There has been a transformation process which I defined as crucial in 2016. Some people who are not members of any political party think that this can be done by taking shortcuts. That is not how it is done. It is done gradually and painstakingly,” the prime minister said.
“We have been conducting the process of transformation of the HDZ for four years. We have stabilised the party, positioning it at the right of centre, rather than on the margin of the political spectrum among radicals and extremists. Those that occupy that part of the political spectrum are not part of our company. … We will fight a fierce political battle against those that incite hatred and sow intolerance in Croatian society,” Plenkovic said.
Milanovic sowed seed of hatred against me
“Those that did not realise that the HDZ of 2020 and the HDZ of several years ago are not the same any more, have a problem with perception and understanding the depth of change. That’s the key and most important message I want to give today, and I am addressing it solely to the left political spectrum,” Plenkovic said, adding that it was the incumbent President Zoran Milanovic who had sown “the seed of hatred and aggression against me” during the political competition between the HDZ and the SDP in 2016.
“He is the one that started labelling, discrediting and attacking (me), which was later picked up by the far right. They have been slinging all that hatred and mud at me for four years, and now it has escalated into an attempted murder and, in my opinion, much more than that. We must ask ourselves where the roots of all this hatred are,” Plenkovic said.
He said he expected the investigation to establish the motive of Monday’s attack, “whether it was an attempt on the life of the prime minister. I want this to be investigated because we need to put a stop to attempts at destabilising the political system.”
“I expect us to get into these nests of hate-mongering and intolerance, the line has been crossed. I have enough information that is publicly available to me to make this conclusion,” Plenkovic said.
