The government of experts has been called for in Croatia more or less all these years as a possible savior from the difficulties the country has found itself in. It seemed that experts could indeed rescue the country from the economic abyss, save it from GDP shortfalls, and the unstoppable growth of public debt.
Most has been the most serious in negotiations after the elections with the HDZ’s Patriotic Coalition and the SDP’s Croatia Grows, requesting the formation of such a government and not backing down from that. However, can a government of experts really lead Croatia out of the crisis, as we have had experts in governments before, but they did not achieve much success. What should such a government look like and is it possible, we discuss this week in Lider’s Fight Club where Drago Munjiza, advisor and entrepreneur, and Goran Čular, assistant professor at the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb, confront their opinions.
Munjiza supports a government of experts, both party-affiliated and non-party, believing that it is most important for a minister to be additionally educated in the matters under the ministry’s jurisdiction, to have spent part of their life in a successful private company or project, and to move in circles of people connected with similar projects. In this regard, such a person should primarily be the prime minister of the new government, and for each position, Munjiza believes that Croatia has more than a dozen candidates. Conversely, Čular thinks that there would not be enough qualified people in Croatia and that politics can generate demands before which experts will remain paralyzed. What kind of experts are needed to break a union strike, he asks, asserting that politicians in democracy always deal with one thing – gaining support in the party, coalition, elections, or in the world. For Čular, the most expert government is always a government of politicians, and he is ‘curious’ why Metković did not need a government of experts, but is led by one, he says, imagine, a psychiatrist.
