Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Friday labelled President Zoran Milanovic's conduct as "a creeping coup" for not allowing Defence Minister Mario Banozic to address conscripts at an oath-taking ceremony earlier on Friday, saying he had thereby made Banozic's position in the government stronger.
“I didn’t see any of it,” Plenkovic told the press in the southern Adriatic city of Dubrovnik. “What I briefly saw was a show of unacceptable behaviour on the part of the president of the republic. This can be freely called a creeping coup.”
He said that not allowing the defence minister to address soldiers taking an oath was “unprecedented” and that such behaviour was “against the law.”
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With today’s decisions, the president is violating the Defence Act, which parliament amended when he served as Prime Minister from 2011 to 2016.
Plenkovic said they agreed to hold a meeting of the Defence Council and the National Security Council on November 9, at which they would raise every issue and see how to reconcile the significantly different views on the rule of law, so that the state could function normally.
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“What happened today, what he did to the Minister, he made the Defence Minister’s position in my government stronger. Today, Banozic is a stronger minister than he was yesterday,” Plenkovic said.
He added that Milanovic would have to find a way to work with Banozic because he would serve as the Minister of Defence as long as this government had a majority, which, he said, it would certainly have until this time in 2024.
Asked if he supported Banozic’s request for the resignation of the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Admiral Robert Hranj, Plenkovic said Hranj was appointed to that post with his co-signature, not “only at the will of the president of the republic.”
“When I return to Zagreb, I will see exactly what happened,” he said, adding that this cannot be dismissed as a simple “quarrel” but a serious problem of unlawful behaviour.
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