Public feedback on the government’s less than auspicious start.
On February 7, 2016, RTL Television published the results of its first poll about the popularity of the new Croatian government led by Prime Minister Tihomir Orešković and compared them with results of a similar poll conducted at the beginning of the term of the previous government led by Zoran Milanović.
The average score given by the respondents to the work and activities of the new Croatian government is 2.41 (on a scale from 1 to 5). In comparison, the former government received an average score of 3.10 in the same period.
As far as the support for the new Prime Minister’s team is concerned, 52.9 percent of respondents completely or mostly support it. However, as many as 30 percent mainly or completely do not support the new government. About 18 percent of respondents do not know whether they support the government or not.
We are at the beginning of the third full week of the new government, but almost one third of all respondents believe that there has not been a single good decision taken. The beginning of the term was marked by a scandal involving Mijo Crnoja, who left the post of the Veterans Affairs Minister after less than one week. Many respondents said that his resignation was one of the few good decisions.
Less than 9 percent of respondents believe that all decisions have been good, with the postponement of payment of salary increases in the public sector and the selection of ministers according to quality and expertise standards have also been assessed as good decisions.
The list of worst decisions also includes the Crnoja affair, as well as the selection of ministers. Third place on the list of bad decisions belongs to the announcement by some of the new ministers that they would like to employ additional personnel in their ministries, which was announced and later denied during the first official meeting of the new cabinet. Nearly 10 percent of respondents object to the fact that the government has failed to react to the pro-Ustasha chants during a protest in Zagreb. About 12 percent believe that not a single bad decisions has been adopted.
As for the future, nearly 70 percent of respondents believe that after Crnoja there will be several or many more dismissals in the new government, while less than 18 percent believe there will not be any more changes in ministerial ranks. Interestingly, Darinko Kosor, president of HSLS which is a member of the Patriotic Coalition, already publicly announced that he expected that a new set of ministers would be appointed with the next three to six months.
