Give Kulisa Grabar-Kitarović a chance

At the same time that she was set to wait for the citizens at Pantovčak, she rose to that cardboard president of hips and analytics. They say that nothing more ingenious could be expected from a woman who draws intellectual and political wisdom from messages on fridge magnets and the sermons of the Tibetan priest Borna Rajić.

Some will say that Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović introduced Disneyland into Croatian politics - she could, they say, put a cardboard figure of Snow White with all seven advisors, so that tourists can be filmed for ten kunas and pay for her expensive presidential palaces - others point to two cardboard soldiers of her Honor Guard and in everything they see Gardaland, the third a bad joke from the state, the virtual Republic, Kolinda's Liberland, and the fourth remind that the physical, real Croatia is just a huge Potemkin village anyway, so the president is - note bene, "a girl from the village " - as a cardboard backdrop, the only legitimate president of such a country.

She didn't get a real chance

Some immediately assessed her as a bit stiff, some again intellectually thin, in short, she fucks with Kulisa Grabar-Kitarović who arrives, without anyone actually giving her a chance.

A hundred days, for example, is the usual grace-period for the government in organized countries, it is a nice democratic custom that presidents and prime ministers are left alone for a hundred days, while they find their way, grasp things and adjust their hand, so that even on the first day, commentators, analysts , the opposition and the public give their verdict on the exchange rate, something like the deadline for returning goods from more developed commercial cultures - so that after a hundred days, dissatisfied customers can return the president to the seller with a refund, because, for example, he lacks a firm hand, or is too narrow, or lets go by word of mouth - a hundred days, after all, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović also got it, so it's really not fair that her cardboard successor at Pantovčak is asked to resign just after the inauguration ceremony, before the unfortunate woman managed to say or do anything.

Whether you liked her or not, you'll have to admit that the way she deals with simple-minded comments on her account all these days is impressive: above them, with dignity and a smile, Kulisa Grabar-Kitarović does not allow serious politics to turn into high school Facebook chatter.

She didn't react to insults and teasing with a single muscle of her face, she didn't respond in kind, she didn't actually respond at all, because "what you want others to keep silent about, first keep silent yourself", as the wise Seneca would say, because "they have the most to say who are silent", Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn would add, because "silence nourishes wisdom", said Sir Francis Bacon, because "sapiens est, qui tacere datur", "the wise is he who knows how to remain silent", said the old Latins, because she is "the best mom in the world" - she has as many wise sayings as you want, the former president has left on her fridge.

Stipe's jokes and Franjin Haag

After Franjo Tuđman, who spoke little malignant nonsense, but also recorded it for posterity and the Hague Court; after Stipe Mesić, who told jokes, as if he were a conference speaker at the Porin awards, and not the president of a serious European country; after Ivo Josipović, the first cardboard president, who spoke as if he had cardboard comic bubbles over his head; finally, after Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović herself, who spoke wise sayings from the blesimeter gesturing with her mouth and hands - having learned in a driving school for sign languages ​​how much space there is to the pillar - the Republic of Croatia has for the first time a president who does not speak nonsense or nonsense, plastic sentences, a head of state from whom you are not and you will not hear either learned demagoguery or affective hate speech.

Kulisa Grabar-Kitarović is the first Croatian president who does not flaunt populist promises outside of her constitutional parameters, and who knows exactly what her powers are: in democratic systems, in which the head of state has a more or less ceremonial, protocol role, and actually only serves for taking pictures, Kulisa Grabar-Kitarović is readily available to the Homeland.

For the first time, therefore, we will not be embarrassed when the head of the cabinet places our cardboard president in Brussels among the European presidents, or when they place her next to the American president in the White House. Mrs. Kulisa has returned pride to small but proud Croatia, she will not condescendingly drool in front of the big ones and beg someone from security to take a picture of her for Facebook with Barack Obama: this president is there so that others can take pictures with her.

Let's give her a hundred days

Unlike her predecessors, with shallow and superficial characters, cheap ready-made caricatures of South American dictators, people of the people, intellectuals or blondes, Kulisa Grabar Kitarović is not a paper, flat character: it is a complex and layered personality, inside her solid statesman figure, behind a gentle smile - equally for the tourist, for the prime minister and for the pope - ancient dramas unfold, the inner wars of a fragile woman and the ruthless, male world of politics, a gentle mother and the supreme commander of the army, a caring wife and a national heroine, ordinary housewives and distinguished guests, girls from the village and a citizen of the world, there are as many layers to her as you want, there are more in those two centimeters of multi-layered cardboard of psychology and literature than in all the six mandates of her predecessors.

Therefore, give Kulisa Grabar-Kitarović a mandate, give her a chance. Give her those hundred days, and then return the marble Tito if he was better for you.

(Free Dalmatia)