Croatia’s politics: A voice from the grave

Date: 10/05/03

A dead general shows up the feebleness of a shaky government

WHEN Janko Bobetko died on April 29th, the government of Croatia probably breathed a sigh of relief. But that was before the funeral of the 84-year-old general on May 2nd provided yet more evidence of the confusion within Ivica Racan's centre-left government.

Bobetko, a former Yugoslav army general, had been wanted since last September by the UN's war-crimes tribunal in The Hague for atrocities allegedly committed by his troops when he was chief of staff of Croatia's army during most of the war of independence in the early 1990s. Fearful of reaction from a public used to seeing him as a hero, the government challenged the indictment in The Hague, and then, when that failed, declined to hand the indictment to Croatian judges for processing.

In the end, the government's blushes were spared when doctors ruled that the ageing general was too ill to stand trial. But already the previously friendly British and Dutch governments had frozen action on the European Union's “stabilisation and association” agreement with Croatia, an early step towards future EU membership.

The doctors' ruling still left an embarrassment: what was to be done next with the general? His death solved that problem - but not for long. The government was unable to persuade his family to accept a state military funeral. The funeral instead became a rally for the nationalist right. Mr Racan had to put up with severe criticism when he paid his respects at the cemetery after the service.

The muddle has been typical of his government since it took power in early 2000 after defeating the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in a general election. The government has quivered at the prospect of protests by war veterans over extraditions to The Hague, and by trade-unionists over economic reforms. With a general election due early next year but likely to be held this year, it has grown even more timid, in a variety of areas.

It has offered to guarantee the debts of several troubled companies - a tactic expensively and unsuccessfully used by the HDZ government as the previous election approached. Privatisation remains stalled; a row with the Peasants' Party, the largest coalition partner of Mr Racan's Social Democrats, led him to dismiss the entire board of the privatisation agency. Even the government's application in February for full EU membership seemed an act of gesture politics rather than policy.

It is all a far cry from the excitement of January 2000, when the then opposition swept aside the HDZ after nearly ten years of the late President Franjo Tudjman's nationalist, authoritarian rule. A disillusioned electorate is even looking again towards the HDZ. In the end, distrust of that party, and fear of what the EU might say, may prevent the nationalists recapturing power. If so, Mr Racan will owe his survival to this, not to his own efforts.

A dead general - Janko Bobetko - shows up the feebleness of a shaky government.

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