The leader of the Croatian Democratic Party of Slavonia and Baranja (HDSSB), Vladimir Sisljagic, said in Osijek on Tuesday that his party had become a target of a media lynching campaign after its main board had decided that all the party's slates in the forthcoming election would be headed by Branimir Glavas, who is currently serving a war crimes sentence in neighbouring Bosnia.
Sisljagic said that Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor had also joined in that campaign, adding that with her statement on Monday she attempted to influence the State Election Commission and the public.
During her visit to the southern coastal town of Makarska on Monday, Kosor said that it was against the law that Glavas, as a convicted war criminal, was heading the HDSSB election slates, adding that the HDSSB did not respect the judicial authority and that parties that did not respect the judicial authority should not exist. She said that it would be a precedent in political, legal and democratic practice to have a convicted war criminal head a party's election slate.
Sisljagic said that the decision by the HDSSB main board to appoint Glavas as the head of the party's election slates was in accordance with the Constitution and laws of Croatia and that it was the party's right.
"It is the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) that is a precedent in political, legal and democratic practice because that party is a generator of corruption and crime," Sisljagic said, adding that the HDSSB would not tolerate lectures from "the president of a compromised organisation that has brought the whole country to the present situation." He said that parties like the HDZ, which "steal from its people", should cease to exist.
