Davorko Vidović, a former minister in Ivica Račan's government and until recently the president of the Social Democrats, has accepted Prime Minister Andrej Plenković's invitation to serve as a special advisor to the Minister of Finance, helping to rectify the injustices that, according to the Prime Minister, were inflicted on veterans by Račan's government.
Davorko Vidović, the man who was in charge of pensions in Ivica Račan's government, has recently become a special advisor to Finance Minister Tomislav Ćorić, and this in Andrej Plenković's cabinet, which persistently claims to be correcting the very injustices against veterans that occurred during the Račan era. The irony, therefore, is built into the staffing decision itself: the Prime Minister hires a man who sat at the table in that government to correct someone else's mistakes.
The monthly fee for advising on public finances amounts to €1,417 gross. For Vidović, who is already retired, this additional income will, to put it mildly, come in handy.
Vidović told Hina that Plenković's offer surprised him, but that he accepted it as "recognition of his professional experience in pension and social policy." However, anyone who followed the parliamentary question time knew there was no room for surprise, the Prime Minister had already openly offered him a coalition in April 2023, before a full chamber.
At that time, Social Democrat MP Ivana Posavec Krivec had called out to him, "You and I are Europhiles," to which Plenković replied with a sentence that today reads as an announcement of future cooperation: "Since you said that both you and we are Europhiles, but above all we are here to represent national interests, I see this as an opening for a possible post-election coalition, and when you get more than those who kicked you out of the SDP."
Sympathy for Vidović and his Social Democrats, whose parliamentary group then numbered 17 MPs, has lasted at least since December 2022, when they were among the few in the opposition to support Croatia's participation in the EUMAM mission, the EU's military assistance to Ukraine. Plenković's gratitude was so direct that a few months later he publicly wished for the SDP's downfall and the rise of the Social Democrats to the position of the leading left-wing party with which the HDZ would form a government.
Vidović did not hide his interest at the time. "We are very critical of the Government, but at the same time fully European-oriented; we share Western values. The Social Democrats are a serious, articulate party, and in that we differ significantly from others in the opposition. Plenković recognizes that; he was sincere during the question time," he commented for Zadar List, adding: "I know he would like to have us as coalition partners; I receive information about that from the HDZ."
The 2024 elections, however, shattered all those calculations to pieces, the Social Democrats lost their parliamentary status, and the HDZ had to piece together a majority with the Homeland Movement. Plenković nevertheless found a way to "form a coalition" with Vidović: he appointed him as an advisor to his minister, after which Vidović stepped down from the party leadership.
To complete the irony, Ćorić and Vidović were not always on such close terms. In the 2020 election campaign, they clashed fiercely in an HTV studio, Vidović then called the HDZ "a Titanic party that has no one to form a coalition with and that has irreversibly lost the trust of Croatian voters," and in late May of that year, he asked: "Imagine how citizens view your government from which so many ministers left due to suspicion of corruption."
Today, however, Plenković said of Vidović at a HAZU conference that he is "a man who is a doyen of Croatian politics and whose government began Croatia's European path." That same doyen is now, practically, part of Plenković's government, the one that is correcting the injustices from the mandate of Prime Minister Ivica Račan, whose close associate Vidović was.
