"Wetting" of Sanader
Gospić (Gospic) is one of 16 Croatian cities and municipalities where the streets are named after Mile Budak. It is the first among them to have that street renamed following Sanader's new policies towards questionable characters from Croatian past.
Sanader, of course, knows that his distancing from far right is going to cost him dearly at the local elections. And even his attempt to put Tito and Communists in the same "anti-totalitarian" legislation is hardly going to win Croatian right-wingers back.
The rest of Croatian electorate, on the other hand, can be at least dissuaded from staging another protest vote against other of Sanader's unpopular policies. The most unpopular among them is, of course, "dry" traffic legislation which already created havoc within Croatian catering industry. In the days following complete ban on alcohol in drivers' blood Croatian restaurant and bar owners reported 30-50 % drop in business.
Today a public petition was being signed at the streets of Zagreb.
Suddenly aware of the law's unpopularity, Sanader used Marko Mlinarić (Marko Mlinaric), minister of interior who comes from wine-loving region of Hrvatsko Zagorje, to drop hints about his version of Prohibition being less strict. Mlinarić announced that the law might be amended before New Year and that some drivers could be allowed to have 0.5 promiles of alcohol in blood. This measure won't apply to drivers younger than 25 years – they would remain "dry".
2 Comments:
Too bad! If the Prohibition plans had NOT been changed, what leading Croatian business leaders, do you think, would have adapted the role of Al Capone or other mobsters from the 1920's who came to fame, thanks to the USA's version of Prohibition? Things would certainly have become more interesting in Croatia.... As you're probably aware, stock-car racing (which is embodied today by NASCAR) became very popular, thanks to the moonshine distillers' needs for fast delivery service with minimal stopping for police.
Our dear PM is all into 'studying the effect of the law before making a decision to change it' these days. Well, while we're speaking of studying the effects, I'd say it'd be interesting to see how many accidents were caused by people who were under 0.5 pro mille, and to compare that to the number of accidents caused by people who were above 0.5, before this particular pearl of Croatian legislature came to be...
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