Zoran Milanović indirectly acknowledged on Sunday that his chair in the SDP is more important to him than the one in the government. After all, poor Aco Stanković spent four long years on his knees begging the Prime Minister to appear on his show, and he only agreed to do so on his way out. But only when he needed it the most.
No, there was no need to go to Aco’s aid before the parliamentary elections. He slightly modified Račan’s slogan ‘we can lose the elections, but not our honor’. In practice, he implemented it as ‘I can lose the state, but not the party’ and began a confrontation with the party challenger Zlatko Komadina. This gave Most and HDZ a little more ammunition to continue their senseless post-election, but actually prolonged pre-election campaign against the former government. And Milanović? Jutarnji somewhat maliciously bids him farewell as a prophet who, during the 2007 election campaign, wore a shirt that said ‘Tim can do anything’.
And, while Tim Orešković is moving his team into Banske Dvori, it is worth recalling some ‘prophetic’ circumstances under which Milanović’s team lost to Sanader’s ‘one man band’. The SDP squandered all advantages because it did not enter into pre-election coalitions, allowing HDZ to gain ‘neutral’ mandates according to D’Hondt. Moreover, Milanović started the campaign by toying with Ljubo Jurčić as a prime ministerial candidate, and then abandoned it only when it was already too late. Yet again, it came to another Račan-like situation: he lost the elections, but not the model. So, since he failed to hand the hot prime ministerial chair to Petrova, Karamarko and Petrov applied the model of delegating responsibility by quickly installing Tim from their new team as prime minister. And Tim had only three hours to make a decision. This indiscretion was detailed by Karamarko’s connection to Orešković, Ante Ćorušić, on HRT. Thus, Orešković initially refused the offered position of the Prime Minister’s (Karamarko’s) deputy who would control the economy and finances. It was only months later that a sudden offer came, relayed by Karamarko’s aide Ćorušić. What remains unclear is whether this indiscretion is a small act of revenge by Ćorušić (if he was dropped from the health minister combination) or part of the game of party discipline against the non-party mandator.
