Castrated dictatorship

The Croatian public and citizens can't see the forest for the trees - said Prime Minister Andrej Plenković these days, and from a time distance of about 70 years, he skilfully moved into Bertolt Brecht's poem, written after the anti-Stalinist workers' uprising in East Germany in the early summer of 1953.

The poem is entitled "The Solution" and in the Serbian translation it goes like this: "After the uprising on June 17/ The Secretary of the Association of Writers ordered/ That leaflets be distributed in Stalin's Alley/ In which it could be read that the people/ Played the trust of the government./ And that he can recover it only/ By redoubled work. Wouldn't it/ Still be simpler to rule/ Dissolve the people and/ Choose another?"

Brecht then made fun of Kurt Barthel, the secretary of the East German writers' association, who in the pamphlet "How ashamed I am!" expressed deep indignation at the people's disobedience, and today, dead-cold, he mocks the forestry engineer at the head of the Croatian government. It is difficult, admittedly, that this will shake the latter in his messianic aspirations, because Brecht, according to his criteria, which he makes known to the nation several times a day, is still an inveterate Russophile.

Plenković, however, cannot choose another nation, the "Croatian public and citizens" are as they are, irritating in their imperfection, just as he cannot change the composition of the parliament in order to ensure a two-thirds majority that would vote for Croatia's participation in the NATO mission in Ukraine. And this, as it seems, brings him to a state close to disorder.

The paradox related to Brecht's joke is that the forestry engineer does not reproach the "Croatian public and citizens" for their rebellious habits, but for their absence. With the fact that the rebellion he has in mind will clearly be directed against Zoran Milanović. In the same litany, in addition to considering the trees and the forest, the prime minister expressed consternation that the citizens did not take the piss, staged an "enormous reaction", organized "big demonstrations" and overthrew the Russian mercenary occupying the position of the president of the country:

"We had the chief of the General Staff under house arrest on Pantovčak. This is something that is unheard of, which required an enormous reaction from the Croatian public, large demonstrations up on the landslide on Pantovčak, the chattering of fauna walking around the President's Office. Nothing is happening with it. "

"How ashamed I am," Barthelovski laments Andrej Plenković, that the Croatian people passively suffer the Russian crap of "Violators of the Constitution", instead of absolving the flora problem - the one with trees and forest - and killing the fauna in front of the traitor's residence. Just a few days earlier, the HDZ presidential candidate Dragan Primorac openly called on the members of the army to find courage and refuse obedience to the commander-in-chief, because he is unworthy of that status, and he also works for Russia.

The package arrangement - calling people to the streets and the army to disobey - therefore leaves no room for doubt: the possibility is invoked - or at the very least it is whined about the missed opportunity - that the one who, by all accounts, will, in the upcoming elections, be forcibly removed from power beat the aforementioned Primorc smoothly.

The second paradox is manifested in the fact that the court on the alleged permanent coup d'état, which Milanović practices day in and day out, in various sectors, serves as an excuse for such a violent undermining of system norms and procedures set by the constitution. The prime minister personally took care of the somnambulistic inflation of the term, enumerating in the mentioned litany "the coups that he (Milanović) is carrying out", namely: "the coup on parliamentary democracy, the coup on the Constitutional Court, the coup on the SOA, a coup against the Chief of the General Staff and a coup against the Croatian Parliament".

It is not a very common occurrence that the president of the country reaches for a coup d'état, but - according to the assessment from Banski dvor - the unspoiled peacock from Pantovčak does it before and after every meal. According to the encyclopedic entry, by the way, a coup d'état is "an unconstitutional and usually violent change of government, often with the help of the army" - that is, exactly what Plenković and Primorac recommend with great enthusiasm.

In other words, the plan is to initiate a coup d'état in order to suppress the ongoing coup d'état, with the fact that the top of the ruling party - which consists of one man - would rather stick to the incitement, than stand in the first lines of destruction: they would leave that honor to the "Croatian public and citizens", and Croatian soldiers. It's just that the people, together with the professionals under arms, are deadly inert so far, and you can't even dissolve them and elect someone else.

As soon as the parliamentary vote on sending Croatian officers to the NATO mission in Ukraine was abruptly postponed, because it was clear that the executive power could not collect a sufficient number of meekly raised hands, the dilemma that besets Andrej Plenković was also clarified, causing the raping of the microphone and raised eyebrows. . The question that breaks his brain is: How to suspend the valid order when its operation is not adapted to my needs?

Like Tuđman in his best days, with only slightly less efficiency, Plenković finds himself in the position of a neutered dictator, one who is unable to subordinate the system to the extent that it serves his political will without a trace, and at the same time cannot tolerate the system sabotaging his political will. Nasty frustrations are in sight when you struggle in the trap of a disabled reign of terror.

To avoid that trap, the prime minister prefers the benefits of a state of emergency, which will not be formally declared, but the forced public tension, he reckons, will create a favorable climate for the self-proclaimed savior to appear with free hands. A state of emergency is not a dictatorship, but a space of anomie in which existing legal provisions and democratic norms are deactivated for the sake of a "higher goal", and the executive power most often sucks the legislative one. That is why the parliamentary decision-making on the (non)participation of the Croatian army in the NATO mission had to be suspended, with the humiliating bringing in of delegates of the colonial patron to "wise up" and "enlighten" irresponsible parliamentarians.

Plenković has done this before. During the pandemic, for example, he excluded the parliament from deciding on the restriction of freedom of movement, most directly violating the Constitution, and that with the help of the puppet Constitutional Court. Seemingly unnecessary, because then he would have received two-thirds support in the Parliament, but it was necessary to demonstrate executive political power, to show that the order was not adjusted so that the ruler adheres to the prescribed standards, but that the standards adhere to the ruler.

Now, the violence of the authorities manifests itself, among other things, in warmongering rhetoric and the division of the political scene into loyal supporters and hated enemies. Bare sycophantic subjection to the centers of global power is presented as a supremely ethical issue, as a crucial test of humanity, so a moralistically intoned harangue is directed, with servants of the Russian occupier and Putin's agents on one side, and philanthropic righteous people on the other.

There is something particularly disgusting in the fact that moral lessons are shared by members of the Government which, while lamenting the sufferings of the Ukrainians, actually supports Israel's aggressor policy. Croatia does not even send humanitarian aid, let alone military aid, to the survivors of the genocide scene - in Gaza.

(portalnovosti.com)