Srečko Jurdana Privately dull, Mr. Banac remains indicative as a representative example of Croatia's posturing phenomenology. He lectures others on rights and ethics, playing the part of some kind of patriot legalist and – as the preferred phrase in our parts goes – of the "morally upstanding", behaving at the same time in the manner of a small time scrounger who will, without flinching, abuse status-related privileges awarded to him as a Member of Parliament. The fact that that kind of person continues to be favoured at the HHO speaks volumes of the current moral definition of the association

Good news often comes with the bad, but when it comes to the situation at the Croatian Helsinki Committee, one piece of good news followed another these past days: Professor Ivo Banac remains the president, while activist-journalist I. Z. Cicak has returned to its fold (the statistics bureau will calculate how many times now). Which is good for the HHO which has "confirmed its continuity", and which is good to observers with a bent towards the comic, because the spectacle of Mr. Banac at the head of any human rights organisation is a parodic phenomenon without parallel, where Cicak's assistance only serves to further the overall clownish impression. The HHO with Banac at its helm has lost every shred of social credibility, but has significantly profited as a factor stimulating the national sentiment, significantly more effectively than TV soaps.

In the scheme of the Banac - Cicak intellectual route it can be concluded that the former has received from the latter the gift of an original lifebelt, one that sinks together with the drowned. The always particularly inspired Cicak has stated that there is nothing contentious in the fact that Banac rented his own flat out to himself at the expense of the national budget, because that is the (normal European practice". One should, on the occasion, certainly find out where in Europe this "practice" is practiced. As is now known, the man used the money, given to him by the state as an independent MP to finance his political activities, for the commercial lease of a part of his apartment to himself in the form of "office space", which he then proceeded to equip adequately with a desk, chair and book shelves with a declared value of one hundred forty thousand kuna, which sounds credible if the cost included the framing of his and Cicak's portraits on the wall.

The newspapers have penned skits on the situation: Banac the landlord and Banac the MP talking before a mirror, with the former asking the latter when he would get around to paying the rent, and so forth. Are there other professions besides that of the parliamentary deputy in which – "in line with European practice" – similar ventures are undertaken? The author of this column has, for example, long ago developed the habit of working at home, and is struck by the notion that he might bill Nacional for the use of his apartment – together with a desk, chair, ficus plant and shelving containing the collected works of Banac, but doubts somehow that that might meet with approval because a private company is not, unfortunately, the same as Croatian Parliament. Banac's work is so precious to the state that it even has to pay for the use of his own washroom. He has to receive people, and cannot – as he says – "receive them at the train station". For that kind of business one rents a flat, even if it has to be one's own flat, available as it is.

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There are some significant nuances to this entire grotesquerie. Banac did not expound on what kind of people he had to receive as an MP, and to what purpose, given that he was a figure bereft of nay kind of practical influence. He also omitted an explanation of why he did not use the Parliament offices for his activities as a delegate. Parliament has for its regional members – among whom Banac is listed expressly as a user – provided two very well equipped office on St. Marks square and on Demetrova street, with computers, telephones and secretaries. Banac could, however, concentrate on the issues only in the silence of his own home, interpreted as official premises, because Banac's life – is Banac's métier. He was given an opportunity on TV at several occasions to offer some kind of justification for his amoral actions, and there too eh cited enemies of all colours who mock him, not because of some wrong he has done, but because they hate him for his integrity.

Truly, he shall provoke mass sympathy with claims that there is a plot afoot against him, which began with the Pukanic case. Is it Pukanic's fault that he made a public caricature of himself? He has allegedly also cut of good relations with Europa Press Holding* (EPH), unhappy with the way they have handled his residential arrangements. Privately dull, Mr. Banac remains indicative as a representative example of Croatia's posturing phenomenology. He lectures others on rights and ethics, playing the part of some kind of patriot legalist and – as the preferred phrase in our parts goes – of the "morally upstanding", behaving at the same time in the manner of a small time scrounger who will, without flinching, abuse status-related privileges awarded to him as an Member of Parliament. The fact that that kind of person continues to be favoured at the HHO speaks volumes of the current moral definition of the association.

Banac, of course, is not alone in the rapacious behaviour he carries out under the guise of a fight for high ideals. There are quite a number of less prominent, but similar, figures, especially in a leisurely Parliament, and by way of these persons the question arises drastically as to whether parallel parliamentary emoluments have any sense other than in swamping brimming pockets. Slaven Letica too, yet another in a spate of moralists, used his term in Parliament to take some one hundred thousand euro from the state, although he – unlike Banac – never succeeded in concealing his cynical utilitarian nature. Mr. Banac and his apartment are logical continuations of the case of Feral Tribune, in which the "do it yourself" man was a prominent purveyor of righteous poppycock. There too the management of the newspaper was involved privately in back room dealing on a large scale with flats, earning millions, while for the public they played the role of outsider revolutionaries, consoling their reporters with tales of a common destitution. In Croatia, many distributors of great declarations on humanism and the renaissance hide behind them their very corporeal flip side, and those who believe in their therapies would be better served to think twice before swallowing them...

Vice Vukov; Sanader in NATO trance; Zagorec

Vice Vukov has passed away, after a three-year coma caused by a fall on the steps of Parliament. Entry into Parliament proved for him fatal, literally, He had a first rate voice, one he could have sung in the opera with. The Titoist regime banned him from public appearances in the 1970s, even though he was no dyed-in-the-wool nationalist. It was enough that his songs smacked of a wistful national tenor. With the coming of political change his charisma became even greater. The time off the stage he used for his own intellectual advancement in Paris, and then – when it became possible – he got into politics as a respectable public figure on the left wing of the party political spectrum. The end of Vice's life was upsetting and a source of grief to all who followed his agony. He will never again drop by for a wine spritzer at Blato café near his Zagreb flat. Only the unforgettable Zvona moga grada (Bells of My Town) will bear memory to Vukov.
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The US ratification of the protocol on Croatia's accession to NATO was presented by Ivo Sanader as his political triumph without precedent, attacking in the process President Mesic and his advisors "for non-alignment" and for insisting that ambassador Neven Jurica explain what kind of lobbying he had spent state money on. First of all, had he before that provided people with the possibility for a better standard of living in Croatia, Sanader's showing off with NATO would have had an incomparably greater effect. Secondly, international political experience over the past fifty years or so forewarns that putting all of your chips on America does not have to turn out to be unconditionally productive, and in that regard Mesic's attempts to broaden Croatia's foreign policy spectrum – which Sanader sweepingly refers to as advocating nonalignment – is a wise statesmanlike strategy. Thirdly, Jurica is Sanader's ally from the primordial phase of the HDZ and the Prime Minister has been constant in providing him first class protection, but that does not nullify the fact that at issue is a spendthrift from Sydney to
Washington, legendary by his squandering of national funds, whose lobbying – besides would be entirely meaningless if it were not in the US's strategic favour to have Croatia accede to NATO.
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Austria is finally, perhaps under pressure from the EU, extraditing Vladimir Zagorec. He will have an opportunity, in Croatia, to spill all the information he has on secret bank accounts and their users, and whether some of that will find its way to the public ear and become the subject of a trial, is another, and very speculative, question.