Ahead of the presidential elections in the Republic of Croatia, the editorial staff of Croatians Online is launching a series of articles with the aim of bringing the candidates and their election programs closer to Croats in the diaspora.
To all those who have announced their candidacy so far, we asked the same five questions to find out their views on topics of particular interest to Croats abroad, including the right to vote, military service, double taxation and the tax on pensions. We publish the answers we received in alphabetical order according to the last names of the candidates.*
The first article is dedicated to dr. Tomislav Jonjić, a distinguished lawyer, publicist, diplomat and historian from Imotski, who is entering the presidential race as an independent candidate under the slogan "For the Croatia of our victories". In his program which contains 30 points, Jonjić advocates for a fairer representation of Croats outside their homeland in the Croatian political system. Read below what Mr. Jonjić told us about the key topics concerning Croatian emigration.
1. Currently, some consulates of the Republic of Croatia are overloaded in terms of the amount of work, and it is not possible to get a meeting in them for months. Consequently, do you think that our country has enough consular representations and employees in consulates in view of this, but also in view of the increasing interest in the citizenship of the Republic of Croatia?
If consular officers fail to meet the requests of interested persons, i.e. if there are "waiting lists" in the consular service, which are one of the major problems of Croatian (and not only Croatian) healthcare, it is obvious that something is wrong.
Since the opening of a consulate does not depend only on the will of the Croatian authorities, but also presupposes the consent of the authorities of another country, this problem can be solved to a large extent by increasing the number of consular officers and by organizing the so-called consular days in cities where we do not have consulates.
This form of providing consular assistance in practice means that a consular officer comes to cities where a large number of Croats live for one or two days a week or a month and is at their service. As a rule, it is easier to get the consent of the local authorities for this, and it brings the consular service closer to interested persons, for whom the search for services becomes cheaper and more accessible.
Croatian emigrants and their descendants should be enabled to easily acquire Croatian citizenship, and remarks that a part of them do not actually aspire to come to Croatia, but are interested in the possibility of free movement and employment in the European Union, should mean nothing.
It is up to us that they have the possibility of returning to Croatia and that we additionally connect them with Croatia. We cannot force anyone to live there, but these people are the first ones we must wish for in Croatia. If in some cases there are security reasons that would speak against it, the state can find a valid answer to them as well.
2. If mandatory military service is introduced in the Republic of Croatia, should, in your opinion, the children of Croatian emigrants who live abroad and have received Croatian citizenship, serve military service in Croatia?
This issue is often resolved by a bilateral agreement, and it can also be resolved by internal legislation. I may be mistaken, but I am not aware of an example of any country in the world treating its citizens who have the citizenship of another country as foreigners. For it, as a rule, they are its citizens and they cannot successfully plead in front of its bodies that they are also citizens of some other state. Any different model would lead to legal chaos that every country wants to avoid, including Croatia, which has the right to know how many conscripts it is counting on. It is clear that it would be unfair if the military service in Croatia had to be served by a person who served it in the country of which he also has citizenship.
3. What is your position on the proposal of Minister Primorc not to tax returnees for a period of five years, and what do you think is the key to (finally) ratifying the Double Tax Treaty? In addition, in your opinion, should returning pensioners be taxed on pensions earned abroad?
The idea that returnees are not taxed for five years is, in my opinion, a cheap propaganda trick that will remain without real useful fruits. Changes to our legislative framework are so frequent, and sometimes drastic, that temporary, palliative solutions cannot create the necessary sense of security. On the other hand, not all returnees are in the same real and legal position, our national need is not the same in every social and economic area, and finally, not all Croatian regions are equally developed and equally in need of investment and revitalization of economic, cultural and political life. That is why I think it is necessary to take all these elements into account and to offer a well-thought-out and permanent model whose goal is the demographic and economic revitalization of the whole of Croatia, especially those of its most devastated and vulnerable parts. Double taxation agreements are almost without exception a presumption of this.
In addition to emigrants who left Croatia a long time ago and their descendants, we also need to work on the return of those who moved away in the last ten years. It is necessary to encourage them not only to bring their savings to Croatia, but also to stimulate them to invest the earned money in new businesses in Croatia. This requires strong tax incentives for small entrepreneurs and craftsmen. Everything should be done so that those who are in Croatia do not leave Croatia, and those who are already outside return.
As far as pensions are concerned, I think that the taxation of pensions earned abroad is unfair already for elementary ethical reasons: the vast majority of Croats did not emigrate for some lucrative reasons and only because of the desire for better earnings.
They were forced, sometimes quite openly, and sometimes indirectly, by the Yugoslav communist regime, just as they have been forced abroad in recent years by the still dominant remnants of that regime.
This means that they were punished by the very fact that they left their hometown and homeland and worked abroad. That is why they should not be punished once again and thus discouraged from coming to Croatia. Because, let's not forget, the prices and costs of living in Croatia are no longer much lower than those in the West. Is it in our interest that a Croatian pensioner spends his pension earned in Germany or Switzerland there, and not in Croatia?!
4. Do you think that Croatian emigrants, even though they do not live in Croatia, should vote in elections. Why?
Certainly. It is explicitly written in my program. Moreover, I am in favor of introducing a bicameral Croatian State Parliament as part of a complete constitutional reform, whereby Croats living outside the Republic of Croatia would elect the majority of representatives to the second chamber by correspondence or electronically, who would be their authentic representatives, and not as before - especially since the time of Milanović's government - a handful of people actually installed in the Parliament by the HDZ leadership.
Croats outside the Republic of Croatia deserve recognition for everything they have contributed to the liberation and defense of Croatian thought and the Croatian state, and the homeland has the obligation to provide them with a stronger connection with it and the protection of their rights in it.
If, for example, Croats from the North American continent really had a dozen of their own representatives in the Parliament, then they could not be so bureaucratically bullied, blackmailed and prevented from investing in Croatia and their possible desire to move their business, and even their descendants, to Croatia .
5. Briefly outline the key points of your program, with special reference to Croatian emigration.
This program, formulated in 30 points, diagnoses the situation in Croatian society and offers concrete answers to concrete problems that burden our people and our country every day. It offers a vision of a modern and democratic, Western-oriented Croatian state that should finally be freed from all Yugoslav and communist ballast. In it, the Croatian nation is understood as one and unique nation, a nation that has its own interests and demands - because a nation that does not have its own demands ceases to be a nation! – but he respects international law and is loyal to his allies. As such, that program received the public support of more than 350 distinguished persons of Croatian public, scientific and cultural-artistic life.
The very fact that, like never before President Tuđman, he was supported by members of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and artists, university teachers, writers, journalists, former ministers, high-ranking military officers, former political emigrants, former Croatian political prisoners and others, eloquently explains why I, as its creator and advocate is facing a complete media blockade.
I demand a Croatia that returns to its Croatian roots and I propose concrete measures to achieve this, and on the other side are those who are satisfied with today's broken Croatia, a country that might be slightly cosmetically improved, but which, unfortunately, would remain what it is today : Yugoslav governorate wrapped in Croatian tricolor cellophane.
About Tomislav Jonjić
Tomislav Jonjić was born on May 19, 1965 in Imotski, as the eldest of five children in a family of political prisoners. As high school students, his parents were sentenced to several years in prison in 1959 for organizing an illegal organization called Croatian Revolutionary Youth.
He attended elementary school in the Imotska Krajina area, and graduated from high school in 1983 in Imotski. After completing his military service (1983/84), he enrolled in law studies at the University of Zagreb, where he graduated in 1988. During his studies, he married Mariana Ujević, a descendant of the family from which dr. Mate Ujević, founder and editor-in-chief of the Croatian Encyclopedia. Tomislav and Mariana have three sons: Trpimir (1988), Zvonimir (1993) and Mislav (2001) and are the proud grandparents of four grandchildren, while a fifth grandchild is on the way.
As a student, in 1985 he was denied the extension of his passport originally issued in 1980 for "reasons of security and defense of the country", which made it difficult for him to further improve his foreign languages. In 1988, he began his legal career as a trainee in Imotski, and already in 1991 he was entered in the Directory of Lawyers. Comparatively, he stands out as a publicist – from 1990 to the present, he has published over 2000 articles in various newspapers and magazines.
At the beginning of April 1990, he joined the Croatian Party of Rights as the first member in Dalmatia and Western Herzegovina. After the Serbian rebellion in 1990, he participated in the organization of the defense of Imotski and the creation of the Imotski Battalion of the 4th Brigade of the Croatian Army. From spring to November 1992, he held the position of assistant for legal affairs to the commander of the 115th HV brigade.
From 1992 to 1995, he was a diplomat at the Embassy in Bern, Switzerland, and then an advisor for international relations at the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Croatia. He was re-entered in the Register of Lawyers in September 1997. As the lead defense attorney, he defended in two proceedings before the ICTY in The Hague and before the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo.
From 2017 to 2021, he was a member of the Zagreb City Assembly. He was one of the co-founders and a member of the presidency of the party Independent for Croatia.
He received his doctorate in 2015 on the topic "Ivo Pilar as a political ideologist", and since 2020 he is a research associate at the Croatian Institute of History. He participated in a large number of scientific and professional meetings in the country and abroad and is a member of the editorial board of several newspapers and magazines. Since 1997, he has been the editor-in-chief of the magazine Politički zavretnik, the newsletter of the Croatian Society of Political Prisoners. He is a regular member of Matica hrvatska.
He is the author of 11 books and over fifty scientific and professional articles in the fields of history, law, sociology and literature. Among his works, the collection of discussions Croatian nationalism and European integration (Naklada Trpimir, Zagreb, 2008, 216 pages), four scientific monographs: Croatian foreign policy 1939-1942 stand out. (Libar, Zagreb, 2000, IX + 944 pp.); Ivo Pilar: writer, politician, ideologue (1898-1918), (AGM, Zagreb, 2020, 899 pages); Antun Gustav Matoš - Under Starčević's banner (AGM, Zagreb, 2019, 886 pages); Ivo Pilar 1918–1933: The Yugoslav Years of the Anti-Yugoslav Ideologist (Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada–Hrvatsko katolichko sveučilište, Zagreb, 2023, 669 p.) and one collection of documents with an extensive introductory study: From the correspondence of dr. Mile Budaka (1907-1944) (coauthor Stjepan Matković, Ph.D.), (Croatian State Archives, Zagreb, 2012, 766 pages)
* At the time of sending the questions to the presidential candidates, eleven people announced their candidacy. Candidates who joined later will receive the questions later.
Photo: Boris Ščitar
Listen to Croatians Online here:
Croatian American Media Association Corp is a tax exempt organization under Section 501 c(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (EIN # 99-1591741). Your donation is greatly appreciated and will be used to support our mission. Your contribution is tax deductible to the full extent permitted by law.
