“The ruling in the Fimi Media case has been upheld, and the Rimac case went public five weeks before parliamentary elections, that’s how well I control the judiciary. That kind of demagoguery and untruths won’t work,” he told independent MP Karolina Vidović Krišto, who said that Plenković was blocking the work of the judiciary.
“The government is intensively fighting corruption … there is zero-tolerance to corruption. You can vilify us… but the growth of more than 9% and the 25 billion euros, you would not be able to achieve that even in a hundred years,” he said when asked by MP Sandra Benčić (We Can!) how he intended to fight corruption without increasing budget funds for that purpose.
MP Stephen Nikola Bartulica called for structural reforms, notably in what he described as the “socialist health system”, to which Plenković said it would be more useful if Bartulica recommended that people get vaccinated against coronavirus instead of taking part in rallies where a drug against animal parasites is advertised as a drug against coronavirus.
As for Croatian Sovereignists MP Marko Milanović Litre’s remark that MP Milorad Pupovac of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) had accused Croatia of ethnic cleansing, Plenković said that Litre, too, was spreading demagogy.
“When there is nothing else to complain about, you complain about Pupovac. That’s cheap demagoguery, I guess you are disappointed by the failure of your brilliant referendum initiative,” Plenković said in reference to the initiative for a referendum against the introduction of the euro currency.
Asked by Urša Raukar Gamulin of We Can! how much budget funds were envisaged for the fight against domestic violence, mentioning in that context a case in Split on Tuesday, when a woman was killed by her former husband, Plenković said that his government had ratified the Istanbul Convention, paying a part of the political price for doing so.
“Unfortunately, I cannot prevent primitive, violent people and idiots from committing such crimes. I have no cure for that but I can make the Criminal Code and all the other laws stricter,” he said.
Some of MPs’ questions for Finance Minister Zdravko Marić were about the planned healthcare budget.
Next year, slightly more than HRK 16 billion will be set aside for healthcare, plus certain direct payments for the settlement of debts, but that amount will not be at the same level as in 2021, Marić said, adding that certain steps were expected to be made to reduce that burden.
