President Zoran Milanovic said on Saturday the healthcare reform should resume from where his former government stopped with it and that Health Minister Vili Beros evidently no longer had the support of his boss.

“Healthcare reform should be done where we stopped, which is the state’s minimum debt to drug wholesalers. Obligations should be serviced… One should not create a business relationship if you can’t service obligations. These are high costs. I can say exactly what I took over as prime minister, what we found and what we left behind in incomparably more difficult financial conditions,” Milanovic told reporters in Marcana.

He said his government was working in a far more difficult economic situation than the present one and under far more difficult borrowing terms.

Beros will be discarded

Milanovic went on to say that every minister should have the prime minister’s support and that his Health Minister Sinisa Varga “had full support and achieved a lot.”

“Minister Beros evidently doesn’t have the support of his boss. He’s here to be used up and discarded as a towel and that’s what will happen to him. I’m sorry for that because he embarked on the job with lots of emotion and elan, perhaps too enthusiastically in some things, without realising who he was dealing with.”

“Crises like this are a clear indicator and sign that something is not working in the relations between the top of the government and other ministers,” Milanovic said about the crisis caused by a recent suspension of drug supplies to hospitals due to the debt owed to drug wholesalers.

HDZ member is behind arguments that I have something to do with JANAF

Speaking of the JANAF oil pipeline operator, he said “an attempt is being made to create an argument that I have something to do with JANAF and Dragan Kovacevic, and a member of the (ruling) HDZ is behind all that.”

Kovacevic is the former CEO of JANAF currently in custody on suspicion of bribe-taking and unlawful preferential treatment.

“These arguments are being put forth by the HDZ’s spokesman, a man who during the war incited against Serbs in Croatia. That man is still the HDZ’s spokesman. I won’t name him, but the official newspaper of the Serb National Council, Novosti, wrote about him, so Pupovac and Plenkovic should see what to do about him.”

Milorad Pupovac is a Croatian Serb MP whose party is part of the ruling coalition.

Milanovic said “people like the HDZ’s spokesman have no place in political parties, particularly not in a so-called centre-right party, which the HDZ is. He is a hater of everything that is Croatian and the author of those obscenities.”

In February 2019, Novosti wrote about Andrej Rora as the head of the HDZ’s press department.

Milanovic said Kovacevic came to the helm of JANAF via the Croatian People’s Party, which at the time was led by Radimir Cacic.

Croatia has solid experience with local elections

Speaking of local elections, due in May, Milanovic said they should be held and that the results should be made known as soon as possible, adding that Croatia had a solid experience with local elections.