I Beg Forgiveness from Whomever I Might Have Offen

I gave and took blows. I certainly might have overacted to injustices, so I am using this occasion of forgiveness.

After a politically turbulent year full of turmoil on the internal and foreign scene, the days of Christmas arrive. This is the right time for reconciliatory issues, which will soften the harshness of year-round political conflicts. I think that this is an opportunity to evaluate our way of political communication which is at an unenviable level. It is packed with lack of tolerance, inappropriately aggressive speeches and a severity that bothers most citizens. Unfortunately, Croatian politicians have adopted all the wrong points from their foreign colleagues, forgetting the civilisational inheritance of the institute of apology.

As I analyse the past year in personal experience, I conclude that I am not an exception to such conduct. I have given blows, but also took blows. Were they always on the level of decency, even political decency? I have suffered many a lie and insult to which it is difficult not to react. For example, I was accused of certain affairs that did not exist, except in the minds of those who wish to score political points at the expense of others. I read at least several dozen lies about myself in the press. They were partly manufactured in the political factory, partly in the offices of our media. I am the least angry at well-constructed jokes, whether they were based on the truth or not. The hardest for me were malicious fabrications that are the result of the deepest hatred. A typical example is the repeated writing of a daily saying that I had taken part in illicit exploits in one of our neighbouring countries, even though the country’s administration officials and director of the allegedly harmed company had refuted these allegations in our media a long time before. The intentional repetition of lies is inflammatory speech, which does not fit in my vision of a content state of Croatia. It is not a pleasant task to defend oneself from obvious lies in front of cameras, with more media time being given to the authors of the fabrication than the accused. It is easier to bear a ban from some media. My first such ban was in 1998 and the second in the past several years. Even this is better than lies, slander or any other form of hatred.

What is the main cause of such events? The inexistence of responsibility for the uttered word! The complete decriminalisation of libel in the media, as was recently introduced in the legislature, has given a green light to those for whom slander is a means of public communication. The second reason is the lack of any kind of protection for whoever is objected to slander. A recent example, when a collocutor accused me (and the party I represented) of being “border fascists” on television, is the most dreadful thing a Croatian politician can experience on the public scene. Nobody, not one medium, did not criticise this harshest slander uttered in public in the last fifteen years! More so because it pertained to the party that the majority of the Croatian people had elected several times at democratic elections, so it is clear that the accusation also pertains to the electorate, which, either did not recognise the border fascism of the party it was electing, which is not probably, or accepted it, which would be tragic.

I wonder, how did I respond to all those lies and insults? I admit, not always with constraint or decorum. I made an effort not to be the first to insult and I do not know if I succeeded in that. I am aware that I responded to a cast stone with an ever bigger one. It is never my intention to insult my collocutor, but it is specious whether I can always exercise constraint in my reply to an insult against me personally, my party, the people to whom I belong or any man. I must have sometimes overreacted to an insult. Therefore, I use this time of forgiveness and beg all those I insulted to forgive me. This is the least I can do as a Christian during Christmas time. I do this in all honesty and with joy.

Yours,

Andrija Hebrang

Croatian Democratic Party (HDZ)