Asked by the press about the case of First Deputy Prime Minister Radimir Cacic, for whom a Hungarian court will soon hand down a verdict pending appeal on charges that he caused a car accident with fatalities, Croatian MPs on Thursday had different opinions as to whether he should stay in the government or step down until the verdict becomes final.
Moral standards, if they exist, must be the same for everyone, said Mirela Holy of the ruling coalition's Social Democratic Party when asked if Cacic should take responsibility and bear the consequences for the car crash in Hungary in which two people were killed.
Holy said Cacic should not have become part of the government at all given that over the past six months the "Cacic case" had damaged the government.
Members of the press also wanted to know if the government had set too high moral standards which some could, nonetheless, sidestep.
That's not a question for me but for the government and the PM, said Holy, who recently resigned as Environment Protection Minister after the leak of an email in which she asked the head of state railway company HZ, Rene Valcic, to protect the wife of their mutual party colleague against a possible change of her position in that company.
"If the rules of the game are defined, everyone should abide by them," said Holy, who is also perceived in the public as having been an obstacle to Cacic's insistence on the implementation of certain projects regardless of their possible impact on the environment.
Gordan Jandrokovic of the opposition Croatian Democratic Union said Cacic should have stepped down and waited for the verdict to become final. "An acquittal would change the situation and then it would be normal for him to stay. However, in this uncertainty, with a likely conviction, I think it's not good for this man to be Croatia's first deputy prime minister."
Jandrokovic said he especially took issue with the fact that the government would allegedly support Cacic even if he were convicted.
Goran Beus Richembergh of Cacic's People's Party (HNS) said the HNS would not have it easier if Cacic were not the first deputy PM, because his office was a guarantee that the party's programmes would be carried out.
Reporters asked if the HNS still believed that Cacic would leave the government if convicted. "Mr Cacic has said very clearly that a conviction, i.e. an unsuspended term of imprisonment, is the deciding factor," he said.
