The Knights of the Shitty Coastline: 

On ‘Slobodna Dalmacija’

Goran Vezic

Along with his extraordinary accomplishments, both literary and political, as a sort of a stinky tail, it was until his deathbed that late Croatian poet and politician Vlado Gotovac tugged along his unfortunate statement from back in 1993 – at the time HDZ took over the thus far independent “Slobodna Dalmacija” – that the fate of democracy in a society is not measured by the fate of a single paper. The truth is exactly opposite and easily provable in Croatia: the fate of democracy in this country was measured by the fate of media and journalists. 

Parallel to a number of repression examples from the gloomy years, there were also some positive signs for the Croatian political destiny: when a hundred thousand Zagrebans at the Jelacica Square succeeded in defending the Radio 101, it was clear that there is hope for the Croatian democracy; when judge Drazen Tripalo in Zagreb rejected Tudjman’s lawsuit against “Feral” journalists Viktor Ivancic and Marinko Culic due to comparison of Tudjman with Franc, it was clear that there is hope for the Croatian judiciary too. Last week on the Split city quayside, when the coryphées of the Feral culture column titled Greatest Shits – president of the Headquarters for Defense of Dignity of “Slobodna Dalmacija” colonel Mirko Condic, journalists Carl Gustav Stroehm, Nenad Ivankovic, Josko Celan, Zoran Vukman, rabble-rouser Luka Podrug – were "shitting" their obscure qualifications “in defense of ‘Slobodna Dalmacija” in front of some fifteen thousand people, it was clear that the Croatian democracy had made a seven-mile stride over the past eight years. Of these fifteen thousand or so participants, those in the front rows were enthusiastically singing the ode “for Jure and Boban” on the U-shit scale, and decent people were having holiday dinner after the flower holiday at the coast, on the eaves of the Day of St. Dujo, the city patron, while Split city mayor Ivica Skaric and Split-Dalmatian prefect Branimir Luksic were present on the stage of the degraded general Anto Gotovina and former (and current?) powerful intelligence agent and Tudjman’s advisor Markica Rebic, thus violating the age-old Split city statute forbidding incidents, protests and conflicts in the week of the St. Dujo holiday, in addition to all the misery of observing such a rally and the hate speech it contained. 

Thus, last week on the Split city quayside almost every third reader was defending the "Slobodna Dalmacija", sold today in some fifty thousand copies, whereas back in 1993, when it was sold in some 120,000 copies, the “Slobodna Dalmacija” was defended by none. For fear, of course, which is no longer in Croatia – except that it is reinstated in memory by the the rigid actions of the knights of the Split Shitty Coastline, instigating the war against “Communists, Yugoslavs, UDBA and KOS agents and supporters …”. On Sunday, the supporters of those same knights used force to chase off the Quayside that brave person who had the courage to yell at those one the stage to come off of it for a little bit. The cleansers of the spiritual domain on the Shitty Coastline called this poor guy a Chetnik, in the same manner used by the paper they were defending. The same thing happened to another more benevolent observer who only yelled at Carl Gustav Stroehm telling him that he should learn to speak Croatian. 

The follies of the Croatian transition over the past decade have been reflected in the case of the “Slobodna Dalmacija”. He who knows about the Split “Slobodna Dalmacija” daily, he also knows about late Josko Kulusic and Miljenko Smoje. He who knows that in late eighties and particularly in early nineties this was the best daily in Croatia and beyond, he also knows about Viktor Ivancic, Jelena Lovric, Boris Dezulovic, Dragutin Hedl, Zvonimir Krstulovic, Sanja Modric, Predraga Lucic, Djerman Senjanovic ... He who knows that all the above listed have left the “Slobodna Dalmacija” after the unsuccessful strike in March 1993, he also knows that this newspaper was taken by Miroslav Kutle, at the time just starting his flash-like upward soaring career and today an imprisoned tycoon. It was exactly him, with his HDZ sponsors, to install strike breakers Dino Mikulandra, Josip Jovic, Davor Maric, Krunoslav Kljakovic …at the head of the “Slobodna”. He who knows that such “Slobodna Dalmacija” back in 1993 fell down onto the plane of a party bulletin and sank down into hate speech, he also knows – including those referred to in the previous sentence – about Josko Celan, Zoran Vukman, Ivica Marijacic, Anto Guga, Damir Dukic… He who knows that such “Slobodna” and “Nedjeljna Dalmacija” nevertheless had a few worthy journalists and editors, he also knows that it was left by Miljenko Jergovic, Zlatko Gall, Jurica Pavicic, Ante Tomic… And last year, those who remained – more precisely, 75 per cent of them – sought the dismissal of Josip Jovic, editor-in-chief, due to the professional, ethical and economic downfall of the “Slobodna”. 

To put it frankly, Jovic was not the only one to be blamed for the debacle of the newspaper, he was only on the top of the mast on a sinking ship. The influential and profitable paper was wrecked back in 1993. The privatization of the paper as per the so-called Markovic’s law was cancelled, whereas for instance, the nowadays exceptionally successful Rovinj Tobacco Factory was privatized in Croatia in this way. 

 Violent plunder, that the journalists attempted to resist by striking for eight days without success, had both economic and political reasons. The profit was dumped over to the party tycoon Miroslav Kutle, and the HDZ took the political influence. The free newspaper was harnessed into the HDZ propaganda and, even worse, into hate speech. Some theories exist claiming that the “Slobodna” was occupied exclusively in order to become media support to Tudjman/Susak/Boban’s war against Bosniaks, in addition to the HTV. Heading this campaign happened to be Dino Mikulandra, a former Sarajevo student. Based on a similar pattern, Josko Celan, a former Belgrade student, was set in charge of hate speech against Serbs, and Josip Jovic – again based on a similar pattern of settling accounts with one’s own past – held the department of fighting against the Croatian leftists, “anti-fascists, communists and Yu-nostalgists”, probably because he also used to be president of the Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia in Imotski, and the last party secretary of the “Slobodna”. Younger cadre without background managed well, so that Damir Dukic became “famous” for his Sagolj-style text “Rebels in Harem Pants”, when women and children refugees from BH accommodated on the island of Brac were pronounced Mujahedeens. 

Josip Jovic soon succeeded Dino Mikulandra at the post of editor-in-chief, and soon after he fell down from it when he published a harmless humoresque that was meant to be mild criticism against Tudjman’s regime. He temporarily settled down as editor of the Zagreb “Panorama” weekly, the top editors of which sat in intelligence services. The second time that Jovic took the position of editor-in-chief was roughly when Croatia was undergoing democratic changes. Tudjman’s protegee Olga Ramljak, who had come to the position of editor-in-chief of the “Slobodna” straight from the position of head of the Zagreb correspondent office of this newspaper, had abdicated, and Jovic returned, by the will of the then owner Miroslav Kutle. Jovic showed gratefulness to Tudjman’s favourite tycoon and to the so-called intelligence underground which had influence into the editorial policy of the “Slobodna” very soon by pronouncing presidential candidate Stipe Mesic an UDBA agent – in the issue published on the eaves of the election silence, when Mesic was no longer able to respond. It was this early that the germ of the media/political/intelligence war was conceived against the current president, which culminated last week on the Split city quayside, by insults thrown on Mesic from the stage and from the audience. 

Otherwise, this war against Mesic had lasted for full 16 months, in spite of the fact that after the downfall of Kutle the tycoon the “Slobodna Dalmacija” became the property of state-owned banks. The state is an 88 per cent owner of the “Slobodna Dalmacija” and the “owner” of its debt amounting to some one hundred million deutsche marks. In accordance with its already proverbial slowness, the Government did not resolve the issue of that “novelty” they now had. Thus, the “Slobodna Dalmacija” turned into the fiercest critic of the new Croatian government and the spokesman of the Croatian right-wing, which is a legitimate position, but the problem is that both the circulation and professional level of the paper deteriorated in order for it to maintain this position. At the time when general Mirko Norac was concealing himself from the law accusing him of war crimes, Josip Jovic himself published an “interview” with him which was subsequently found to be made up, according to the allegations of Mirko Norac himself. 

At the same time, the state governed by the rule of law did not resolve the issues of the deprived small share-holders who had been seeking their rights since as early as back in 1993. The major coalition partners both in Split and Croatia – Racan’s SDP and Budisa’s HSLS – were testing their strengths on the issue of “Slobodna Dalmacija”, wishing to secure a larger influence in the paper. All over this period, the heavily indebted “Slobodna Dalmacija” was facing bankruptcy. 

Things finally started rolling in March when the Croatian Privatization Fund appointed the new supervisory board for the “Slobodna Dalmacija”, and in April this board dismissed the then president of the Administration Miroslav Ivic, placing Srdjan Kovacic onto that position. Several weeks before, Kovacic had dismissed Josip Jovic and appointed the acting editor-in-chief to be Drazen Gudic, who had before then worked as assistant editor-in-chief of the “Nedjeljna Dalmacija”. Along with this appointment, Kovacic promised that the conference of journalists would select the new editor-in-chief themselves. Theoretically speaking, even Josip Jovic could become editor-in-chief again in this way. But of course, both Jovic and his editorial team sympahtizers know that this is not viable, because they have no support among the journalists. This is why they have hit the street. 

First of all, after Jovic’s dismissal, candles were peacefully lit, and copies of the “Slobodna” were aggressively torn apart in front of the “Slobodna Dalmacija”. Then the Headquarters for Defense of Dignity of the Homeland War immediately formed the Committee for Defense of the “Slobodna”. It was this Committee that organized the meeting on the Quayside with all those picturesque speakers. On this occasion, the intimate friend, protégé and private commentator of Franjo Tudjman, Austrian journalist Carl Gustav Stroehm, complained that right after the elections he had been left without his freelance job on the Croatian Television. Another well-paid HTV freelancer, Nenad Ivankovic, former editor-in-chief of the "Vjesnik", who had brought that paper down to the lowest levels in its whole history, complained of having been jobless for more than one year. At this, he did not mention the astronomic amount he received as severance pay when he left the "Vjesnik". Josko Celan read the letter of Josip Jovic – from Munich – in which he accused the “rigid Yu-communist current with numerous members of former intelligence services” for his dismissal, and Zoran Vukman expressed the readiness to suffer a twenty-year silence, and promised that he would afterwards disclose full truth on the current government to the people. Before this rally, Vukman and Celan had announced starting of their own diary (it would indeed be interesting to see what its circulation would be), but they also stressed that finance is a problem. Maybe this is exactly why Jovic was writing from Munich? 

All along this big row about the “Slobodna”, the new Administration President Srdjan Kovacic has been preparing for negotiations with creditors in order to prevent this house from going bankrupt. He has also demanded that the editorial team make the “Slobodna” an even better paper than it used to be, so it can retrieve its markets – in Zadar, Sibenik, Dubrovnik – where the “Jutarnji List” is sold better than the “Slobodna” as a regional daily seated in Split. At the same time, the supervisory board headed by Zoran Milas started searching for a strategic partner who would pull out the “Slobodna Dalmacija” from the financial quagmire, and Drazen Gudic is desperate in trying to pull the paper out of the professional sink and he has promised that from now on it will contain more information and less commentaries and disputable columns and columnists, steeped in hate speech. 

The "Slobodna Dalmacija" is such a typical Croatian story, but not only about a newspaper, as formerly said by Vlado Gotovac, but about the whole of Croatia. The reputable newspaper was torn down so that it was first labeled with anti-Croatism, then it was plundered and professionally degraded in the name of ethnic purposes, and – ultimately – now it is looking for a foreign partner in order to save itself. In this – downgraded and disgraced – it has become a flame on the flag of the Croatian leftists unaccustomed to the opposition benches. 

But when flags are flying on the Shitty Coastline, arguments fall down into the seawater, so that it would be illusory to mention a very indicative detail to the Quayside rabble-rousers: that on May 7, 1991, the "Slobodna Dalmacija" was the first Croatian daily printed in color, and that today it is the only Croatian daily issued black and white. Judging by their vocabulary, even the white component is superfluous for them. 

Goran Vezic is director of the independent news agency STINA, Split (Croatia). Translation by: B.R. ©Media Online 2001. All rights reserved.

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