It surprised me. While we were driving towards Karlovac, we saw news from the media about the arrests ordered by the European public prosecutor. For now, it is impossible to say anything more, because there is no way to be informed in any other way than through the media when these things happen - Minister of Regional Development and European Funds Šime Erlić once confided to journalists.
Let's repeat. The Minister of European Funds, the man - as the word itself says - in charge of monitoring the spending of funds from EU funds, was "surprised" when he "saw the news" about the arrests due to the illegal spending of funds from EU funds. And that is probably all that the Minister of European Funds has to say on the subject of the robbery of European funds: for him, "it is impossible to say anything more for now", because - we should remember - "there is no way to get information in any other way than through the media ".
Minister Erlić is just the last of a long line of ministers in the government of Andrej Plenković who, at regular intervals, are extremely "surprised" by news "from the media". In general, for the people who hold the executive power in their hands, Croatian ministers are catastrophically ill-informed, and for the members of the Government, from which about twenty ministers left due to corruption scandals, they are quite easily still "surprised" by corruption scandals.
Well, when we are already mentioning European funds, Minister Erlić came to that position instead of Nataša Tramišak, who was dismissed due to suspicious tenders for the maintenance of the eFunds system, and Minister Tramišak herself came to that position instead of the notorious Gabriela Žalac, who was arrested for looting European funds. . Even after everything, however, Minister Erlić is extremely "surprised" by the looting of European funds. Again, how could he know anything about that? "There is no fucking way to get information in any other way than through the media."
All the way from the very beginning of Plenković's government, when the Minister of State Property Goran Marić was equally "surprised" to discover that his own brother Svetimir was appointed to the management of the Technical Services of Croatian Railways, which he "learned about through the media", all the way to the Minister of Finance Zdravko Marić, who was "surprised by the news" last year that USKOK was investigating Minister Darko Horvat, "which he learned about from the media", the Hadeze people never had any idea about anything: only, the tenants of the buildings around Markova square are every now and then startled by the screams of shocked HDZ members. After resuscitation, the doctor strictly forbids them to read the portal, but - you understand - "there is no way for them to get information in any other way".
The people of Hadeze are irresistibly reminiscent of the infamous JNA major Veselin Šljivančanin, who - after he was sentenced to ten years in prison by the Hague Court for the crime in Vukovar - after leaving prison dead serious said that he "learned about the crime in Ovčara from the media".
And no one is better in these matters than HDZ Major Andrej Plenković himself, the man who invented and patented surprising and finding out from the media. Just a few days before the shocked Minister Erlić, for example, Prime Minister Plenković commented on the affair with the traffic accident of the drunken Vukovar-Srijem prefect Damir Dekanić, "surprised" by declaring that "there is no other information about it than what is on the air". Not even for the Prime Minister himself, "there is no other way to get information".
And so it's been a full six years, ever since one day in 2017, Andrej Plenković went to do what prime ministers do - ceremonially open Interliber Zagreb - and was very "surprised" when he "saw news from the media that Ivica Todorić was arrested". Already the following year, in 2018, the Borg affair broke out, and the surprised Prime Minister Plenković, as announced by the Government, "found out about the payment of the sub-adviser from the media". Just as he was "surprised" by his deputy Vasa Brkić's affair with the disclosure of police secrets to prostitutes, which the prime minister clearly "found out about from the media".
The media is a miracle, a living person learns everything from the media. When, before the 2020 elections, Plenković's HDZ and the Homeland Movement negotiated the distribution of seats, the surprised prime minister "only found out about it from the media". At that time, for example, the HSS raised the issue of the apartment illegally used by Sisak-Moslavina prefect Ivo Žinić in Parliament, and the prime minister was "surprised" to hear about it only a year later. And that, of course, "from the media". Just as he was very "surprised" when, after the HDZ affair in the Vinograd Hospital, he was asked to comment on his choice of a new director, surprised by explaining that he "learned about it after reading the news in the newspaper".
Perhaps the most famous case of Plenković's surprise and knowledge from the media was the aforementioned arrest of his favorite minister of European funds, Gabriela Žalac. "Of course I was surprised by this news," Plenković told reporters at the time. "As for that case, I only know what I've read on the internet now, I don't know anything else." It was exactly the same when the police broke into the house of the Minister of Construction Darko Horvat. "We will see what will happen because we do not have the right information," said the surprised Prime Minister Plenković. He was even more surprised when, a month later, Nataša, the deposed successor of Gabriela, accused the party of threats and intimidation. "I would have preferred to have known about this situation immediately when it appeared, and not to find out about it a few months later, from the media," complained the Prime Minister.
Finally, the unhappy prime minister only learned about the affair of his Minister of Agriculture and Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Tolušić from the media. "I'm surprised, I had no idea about it," was Plenković's first reaction. Even when the affair broke out at the beginning of this year with the SMS correspondence between Gabriela Žalac and Josipa Rimac, in which a certain mysterious "head of AP" appeared, Andrej Plenković did not know about it "anything more than what he read in the newspaper".
Therefore, the sentence that surfaced a week later was interesting and significant, when Nacional also published the messages of Plenković's until recently special advisor Josip Jelic and the former president of the Croatian Forest Management Board Krunoslav Jakupčić, in which the agreement regarding the payment of some bills through the party Jakupčić concludes with the words: "Only so the boss doesn't find out."
"Just so the boss doesn't find out." As we can see, Jelić and Jakupčić - just like Žalac and Rimac - planned everything carefully down to the last and smallest detail, forgetting the key one: Plenković follows the media. If it weren't for journalists and the media, Prime Minister Plenković would have no idea what was happening to him in the Government, let alone in the country. We can only imagine the family drama when the shocked prime minister learned from the media a year ago that his wife was pregnant. His wife was pregnant for the third time, and he "heard it for the first time".
"I'm hearing it for the first time", is Plenković's famous and most frequent sentence, ever since journalists asked him five years ago to comment on the mass departure of HDZ members from the Žitnjak branch, and he was surprised to answer: "I have no idea, this is the first time I'm hearing about it." Or when the other day, after the split between HDZ and Most, the whole country was buzzing about party elections: "Party elections? First time I've heard." Or when the HUP accused the HDZ of using the National Economic Recovery Plan for local elections: "I'm hearing that for the first time." Or when his government was recently accused of knowing about the resale of gas from the Slavonian Plinara: "This is the first time I've heard that. Who is it, when and to whom did he tell it?" Or when, a few months ago, HDZ surveyors were caught in the subdivision of Istria: "I have no idea about that, it's the first time I'm hearing about it."
The way Winston Churchill was written in history with his famous quote about "blood, sweat and tears", John Kennedy with his famous appeal to "don't ask yourself what your country can do for you", Martin Luther King with his anthology speech "I have a dream", and Barack Obama with the famous slogan "Yes, we can", so one day at the foot of the great monument to Andrej Plenković - masterfully caught in a moment of historical shock and disbelief - will be carved his famous: "I have no idea, I'm hearing it for the first time."
Everything that he had ever "heard for the first time" Plenković was surprised to hear from journalists, everything that he "had no idea about" he found out "by reading newspapers and portals", just everything that insidious Croatian ministers had ever done behind his back - making sure "just to the boss doesn't find out" - the boss finally "found out from the media", and what did the boss do in the end? "What we've been seeing in recent years is not good, information from someone's archives, mobile devices or the measures under which someone was being misused. We think it's not good," said the boss recently, announcing changes to the Criminal Code and criminalization - "information leaks"!
Everything he knows about life, politics, nature and society, Plenković "found out from the media", nothing in the world would the poor have had a clue about if there were no media "leakage of information", and in the end, it is clear - what else to work? - decided to sanction "information leakage".
If, you understand, for Plenković and his ministers there really is "no way to be informed in any other way than through the media when these things happen", in that case - when "these things happen" - it should, quite logically, be stopped the media. "Just so the boss doesn't find out."
As we can see, the boss doesn't know much, he only knows one thing, but he knows it very well: he knows how people who know too much fare in his job.
Bonus video:
