President Milanović: Too Many Restrictions on our Freedom Imposed by Governments, without Parliamentary Decisions
The President of the Republic Zoran Milanović participated in a Forum on Global Security – GLOBSEC 2021, which is being held in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. The key topic of this year’s forum is Europe’s and the world’s recovery from the global pandemic.
Besides the President of the Slovak Republic Zuzana Čaputová and the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda, President Milanović spoke at the opening of the GLOBSEC 2021 Forum. The President underlined that before he never would have believed that the things we witnessed over the last year were possible, referring to the pandemic. “Human rights, values we are talking about, personal liberties all those things that we were prone to take for granted were tested. We should take good stock of this crisis, actually we should not allow this crisis to go to waste. To see where we really excelled, in what things we were brilliant, where we hurt, where we failed miserably.”
Describing the situation that led to the pandemic, he called it an emergency. “And the declaration of emergency was very seldom followed by appropriate parliamentary acts. In the United Kingdom parliament is sovereign. In our countries, the people, the nation, the folk, are sovereign. They were not given a word. This was all too administrative. Way too many restrictions on our freedom imposed by the governments, by the ruling elites”, President Milanović stated, and added: “This is a crisis we must take stock of. It was unpredictable, unbelievable – I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe, I wouldn’t believe – that we would be wearing masks, that we would be inventing vaccine in a matter of months.”
Regarding Croatia’s neighbourhood, President Milanović called on the integration of the countries of South East Europe: “We should not forget them because if they are left to their own devices, our enemies will come and take them as their clients – and you very well understand what I am talking about. So it goes for Serbia, which must take more seriously the concepts of functional democracy, but also for Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country torn apart, composed of three constituent ethnics groups. This is a very serious issue”, the President told the Forum participants.
During his stay in Bratislava, President Milanović held separate bilateral meetings with the President of the Slovak Republic Zuzana Čaputová and the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda.
In his statement after the Forum, President Milanović said the Forum was interesting as well as the topic, although somewhat pretentious. “Building the World back Better. I spoke more about certain things related to human freedoms, rights, freedom in general, and some of the questions that have to be raised, now towards the end of the pandemic, to what point we are able to go and accept restrictions to freedoms we consider normal. What is the higher goal that is worthwhile”, the President noted.
At the bilateral meetings with the two presidents President Milanović said that he talked about things that occurred at the NATO summit and leading up to it. “About our struggle for the most essential things. This is a serious lesson, this shouldn’t have happened, it should have been resolved a week ago”, the President said once more referring to the mention of the Dayton Agreement in the declaration. “Someone is opposed to this, someone has a problem with Dayton. It is evident that they want to dismantle it. At the same time some people like Dodik are being punished because they are violating Dayton, and then this same Dayton has to be forced into the Declaration because NATO doesn’t want it. That’s why I told the people, those who don’t know or understand much about it, I had to explain to the people who have no reason not to be inclined to it”, President Milanović said.
PHOTO: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia / Marko Beljan