Aleksandar Stanković (Aleksandar Stankovic) Kills European Dream

When the most infamous and the most pathetic representatives of Tudjman’s regime beat you on your talk show, it is time to think about changing career.

I guess this is the advice most of Croatians would give to Aleksandar Stanković (Aleksandar Stankovic) after today’s Nedjeljom u 2 show (on state-run HRT) in which he hosted Nenad Ivanković (Nenad Ivankovic).

Nenad Ivanković is today best known as the leader of SIN (Samostalnost i napredak), fringe right-wing and the only explicitly Eurosceptic party in Croatia. Before that he used to be one of the more pro-Tudjman journalists in Croatia – something which he had practiced before 1990 as one of the more pro-regime journalists in Yugoslavia. Until Euroscepticism became part of Croatian mainstream, Ivanković as his attempts to scare Croatians by his claims that EU would ban farmers from producing cheese in Croatia were source of ridicule.

Even today, when Euroscepticism in Croatia isn’t laughing matter any more, means, everyone expected Stanković to make a short work of Ivanković.

The start of the show was promising. Stanković at first allowed Ivanković to make some anti-EU arguments and tried to counter with some of his own. But soon it all degenerated into Stanković’s monologue. He didn’t allow Ivanković to speak and soon he switched the topic from EU into Ivanković’s Communist past.

At the same time the show was accompanied with phone poll asking viewers very simple question “Gotovina or EU?”. However, apart from 6-minute clip asking few Croatian celebrities about Gotovina, not a word was said about renegade general. Even Ivanković noticed that in his desperate attempt to stir discussion towards something other than his past.

In the end, the poll results were very clear, very predictable and very one-sided – 91 % people favoured Gotovina walking free to Croatian EU membership.

Ivanković – who had written a hagiographic book about Gotovina few years ago – left the studio victorious. Yet he wasn’t smart or witty as some of Stanković’s previous guests – he was very inferior to them. His victory has less to do with his qualities and more with Stanković’s overconfidence and lack of professionalism.