Civic Committee for Human Rights | Documenta – Centre for Dealing with the Past

Zagreb, 25 October 2011

Statement in respect of announcement of appointing Branimir Glavaš as the head of HDSSB election lists

It is obvious now that vague wording and oversights in the law allowing the situation that even though a convicted person cannot be an MP that it can be the head of an election list, were used by the Croatian Democratic Alliance of Slavonija and Baranja (HDSSB) to appoint Branimir Glavaš as the head of the party's election lists.

As organisations which monitored the trial against Glavaš and others, we assert that the persons in that trial were not convicted in a political process, that the trial was in compliance with the standards of a fair and impartial trial. It's true that the politics was involved but its action was streamed in an opposite direction to the one that the HDSSB heads are implying. This presence of political will is responsible that the trial against Glavaš, a retired general and a powerful politician at that time, commenced 15 long years after the commission of the crimes that had been known and written about for many years. Besides, even during the trial, the court was under repeated pressure exercised in various ways. For instance, in the middle of the trial against Glavaš suspected of war crimes, the competent board of the Croatian Parliament proposed his designation to the Parliament's Human Rights Committee. Moreover, by disrespecting one of the basic democracy principles - a three-way separation of powers (into the legislative, executive and judicial branches) - the Croatian Parliament despite its decision to strip MP Glavaš of immunity from prosecution, did not strip him of immunity in respect of detention extension. This way, the powers of the court to decide on the matter of detention have been usurped. One of the HDSSB MPs is under investigation for attempted bribery of the Croatian Supreme Court's judges in order to quash the first-instance conviction against Glavaš.

After the conviction became final, the HDSSB publicly admitted that it made the decision and acted according to it – assisted Glavaš in his running away to BiH in order to avoid serving his sentence in Croatia.

The HDSSB's insisting on the decision to have a convicted war criminal be the “brand” which will attract new voters – is a precedent that has never been seen in Europe before. It puts into jeopardy the fundamental values of Croatia as a democratic state and a state based on the rule of law and, sequentially, a dangerous attack on Croatia's constitutional order.

We also caution against open threats by HDSSB (Burić: „He (Glavaš) will be back physically much sooner than some think. And then, you persecutors will get into big trouble.“). Not that long ago, people who had been receiving similar threats ended up being kicked out on the street or thrown in the Drava river.

Prevention of such trends falls within the scope of the work of the competent state authorities.

Therefore, we deem that Electoral Committee's future decision should not be prejudiced.

It is necessary to amend the Act on Election of Representatives to the Croatian Parliament (OG 69/03) in order to prevent similar situations in the future that we have war criminals as bearers of election lists. The said Act should be amended in the way that a restriction of the possibility to be elected for a representative is not only applied in the case of Croatian citizens who are not full 18 years of age but also to citizens who are sentenced for crimes by a legally valid court decision to more than 5 years of imprisonment. The provisions of the same Act, which in respect of the heads of election lists only establishes that the head of the list does not have to be the candidate on the list, should be amended in the way to stipulate that the persons who are convicted by a legally valid court decision cannot be designated as the bearers of election lists.

The present situation is clearly a sign that our society has found itself in a very worrying state, which is used by the HDSSB for collecting a marginal number of votes by the electorate which entirely wrongfully evaluates the role of victim and the criminal.

What's more, according to the Constitutional Court Act the request to ban the work of a political party the work of which is in contradiction to the Constitution and the legislation may be submitted by the President of the Republic of Croatia, the Croatian Parliament, the Government of the Republic of Croatia, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia and Attorney General of the Republic of Croatia. We were reminding those institutions to that possibility already when HDSSB was publicly stating that it did not recognise the verdict and that it organised the leaving of convicted war crimes criminal out of Croatia.

Vesna Teršelič, Documenta – Centre for Dealing with the Past

Zoran Pusić, Civic Committee for Human Rights

Katarina Kruhonja, Osijek