Shooting from the Hip, Croatian President Makes Play for New Base

For months, the president has been scathing of the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, accusing it imposing repressive restrictions on the people, regardless of the fact that Croatia's measures are in fact not among the strictest in the European Union despite its poor performance on containing the virus, vaccinating its people and saving lives.

With the government announcing the implementation of COVID certificates for accessing certain institutions and many public services, Milanovic has decided to ride the protest backlash. The president might have raised eyebrows before with his public pronouncements on the pandemic, such as declaring he saw "no need" for vaccinated people to wear masks, but he has now gone even further.

Sensing the popular dissatisfaction with the establishment - personified in the government and its prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic - Milanovic has openly ignored restrictions in his office in the Zagreb neighbourhood of Pantovcak.

Asked if he feared inspectors might arrive, Milanovic said on December 3 that anyone uninvited or "without a court warrant" would not get past the soldiers guarding the presidential residence.

He referred to the potential inspectors as "Janissaries," a reference to Ottoman-era elite soldiers drawn from the ranks of abducted Christian children in the Balkans.

Some legal experts said the president's defiance of state regulations threatened to undermine "Croatia's constitutional order," a kind of "coup d'état", said one.

Anti-vaxxer echoes

Croatian citizens protest against the government's Anti Covid-19 measures during their Festival of Freedom in downtown Zagreb. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT

It is all part of Milanovic's media tit-for-tat with...