"Any plan that starts to be implemented but has not shown results should be constantly re-examined," Josipovic said in an interview with Croatian Radio on Monday.

"The only thing we need to re-examine is the date of the next election," HDZ leader Tomislav Karamarko said in a comment on Tuesday. "I think Josipovic's comment has come very late. He has remembered 15 or 16 months later to question what has definitely been pushing the country into ruin. Plan 21 should have been re-examined three months after the ruling coalition came into power."

"What is there to re-examine? Everything is clear and exact. They are not competent to get this country out of trouble. We had a growth in GDP for two quarters in 2011, we managed to stop the rise in unemployment, but as soon as they came to power, everything started going downhill. And now we should re-examine things? The only thing we should re-examine is the date of the next election," Karamarko told the press at Zagreb's Mirogoj Cemetery where, accompanied by about 100 HDZ members, he laid a wreath and lit a candle on the grave of the first president of independent Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, to mark the anniversary of his birth.

Karamarko said that "Tudjman is to the Croats what Churchill is to the British, De Gaulle to the French, Adenauer to the Germans or Havel to the Czechs."