Zagreb - Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said in Parliament on Tuesday that the SDP's motion for a vote of no confidence in his cabinet is a "performance and a short pamphlet" and added that the proposal to oust the entire government because of one minister will not succeed.
"Given the circumstances, which are serious, namely the corruption scandal involving (ex-health) minister Beroš, I understand your initiative, and probably, we would do the same in your place, so you have hit the mark there. But as for your final goal, which is to demand the resignation of the entire government because of the mistake of one member of the government and those connected to him, while I understand you, that will not succeed. We are more appalled by this scandal than you are, and we are more sorry about it than you are," said the premier.
"Corruption not only has a name and surname, but during the terms of our governments, no one has been protected from criminal prosecution. Unlike during your governments, when the then prime minister (Zoran Milanović) publicly stated that he had insight into investigations and inquiries, I suppose he also had maneuvering room to influence those processes," said Plenković.
Members of Parliament are discussing the no-confidence motion against the Plenković government, initiated by the SDP following the arrest of former Health Minister Vili Beroš, who is accused of involvement in dubious procurement deals for robotic medical devices for public hospitals.
Plenković accuses SDP and Opposition of hate speech
During the debate Plenković said that his HDZ party has been exposed to hate speech from the SDP and the Opposition for years, which, according to him, has become increasingly intense as their years of opposition have grown longer.
"You haven’t offered any alternative to any policies. You sow division in society and blindly follow (President Zoran) Milanović, who is a cancer of Croatian political life," said the PM.
Plenković expressed regret that Opposition MPs did not want to engage in dialogue with the ruling party on any serious issue. He mentioned that SDP MPs fled from the debate on the state budget, refused to negotiate about constitutional judges, and opposed helping Ukraine by sending Croatian officers to Germany.
"You will be just another in a long line of defeated SDP leaders," he told SDP leader Siniša Hajdaš Dončić, who recently replaced Peđa Grbin at the helm of the party.
He listed what the HDZ government has done in the past eight years under challenging circumstances for citizens and the economy, reiterating that the SDP's policies "boil down to inciting hatred and spreading the false thesis about enslaved institutions."
"Is the judiciary enslaved? Would verdicts be passed in that 'enslaved' judiciary against the party you hate so much? Would high-ranking officials be prosecuted? I don’t think so. If that were the case, there would be no fight against corruption or any cases at all," he said.
Plenković promises corruption in healthcare to be fully investigated
Speaking about the latest corruption scandal involving bid rigging for medical equipment, PM Plenković said that the government will "go all the way" to shed light on all corruption cases in healthcare.
"The scandal was uncovered by chance, and now I am very interested in it. Just as I am interested in the time of your government and how the same players were involved back then as well," he said, referring to businessman Saša Pozder, from whom Milanović's government bought ECMO machines. Pozder is one of the suspects in the medical equipment bid rigging case, together with former health minister Beroš.
Health Minister in the Milanović cabinet, Rajko Ostojić, is believed to have collaborated with Saša Pozder in procuring ECMO devices.
In 2014, the Croatian association of hospital doctors called out the then Health Minister Ostojjić (SDP) over the purchase of twice as many ECMO devices as the country needed and that in this way the state budget was defrauded of €2.91 million.
"You are hiding behind Milanović, who violated the Constitution during the parliamentary elections, who tried to remove the chief of the Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA), who imprisoned the chief of the General Staff. Why didn't you launch an initiative to have him removed? And these Stockholm syndrome phenomena, people who support Milanović today after having experienced the most brutal insults, for me, represent a phenomenon that raises questions about their rationality," Plenković concluded.