Cro Cop's Finest Hour

When Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipović (Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic) announced his candidacy for Sabor on SDP ticket, most political observers were left speechless. Most saw this as nothing more than publicity stunt. Later, when Filipović was spending most of his time preparing for Ultimate Fight and Pride tournaments or shooting his first feature film, the consensus was that his Sabor seat was nothing more than convenient way to secure hefty Sabor pension.

Lately there was speculation about Račan (Racan) and "Cro Cop" parting ways and "Cro Cop" joining some of Croatia's right-wing parties. Most believed that "Cro Cop" would follow infamous example of Dijana Čizmadija (Dijana Cizmadija), former fashion model and MS of SDP who had entered history books by being first Sabor representative never to usher a single word during her term.

I was little bit sceptical. When "Cro Cop" appeared in Nedjeljom u 2 talk show and tried to explain why he had entered politics, he had left decent impression. Hardly a genius, smooth operator or eloquent orator, but generally honest man convinced that he is doing the right thing and that he could make a difference.

The great moment for "Cro Cop" came today, during the debate about amendments to Criminal Code. "Cro Cop" finally spoke out for the first time and energetically demanded that Criminal Code becomes much tougher for criminals.

"Life in Croatia is worthy as it was in the Wild West", he said and started mentioned most infamous cases of killers and rapists receiving ridiculously short prison sentences by notoriously lenient Croatian judiciary. "In some countries ordinary young men spend more time in barracks as part of obligatory military training than average Croatian killer spend behind bars".

"Cro Cop" finished by demanding that life imprisonment gets introduced into the Code as the punishment for the worst kind of offences.

His speech was followed by long applause.

I can already guess that some people in Croatia won't share enthusiasm of "Cro Cop"'s Sabor colleagues. Namely Feral Tribune and similar ultra-leftist crowd that still can't forgive "Cro Cop" for few homophobic remarks in Playboy interview one year ago. By adopting Tough On Crime rhetoric he is bound to be painted as authoritarian/fascist by those people.