During the past few days, there has been speculation in the media concerning whether the student plenum of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb will participate in the organization of the announced protests which have been initiated by the Croatian Trade Union Association (HUS). Unfortunately, when reporting the media did not always care to note the basic facts: representatives of HUS invited members of the Plenum on September 2nd to participate “as equals” in organizing the announced “citizen protests”. Seeing as the representatives of HUS where at that time unable to present the precise platform which was to be the basis of these protests, the Plenum concluded that it cannot commit to participate in the organization of the protests without prior knowledge of the programme and demands. It was agreed that HUS will invite the Plenum’s delegates to participate in the meetings of HUS’s expert work group which will draft the “guidelines for exiting the crisis”. This was set as the basic condition for considering possible cooperation. Plenum chose the delegates, and HUS promised to send an invitation for the meeting with their work group in time. (more…)

It was reported today in the news that Minister Primorac visited the editorial board of Jutarnji list (Croatian daily newspapers) on May 5th, 2009. Mr. Primorac, who has kept quiet for a month on the occurrences on the faculties all over the country, has decided to deal with the issue secretly, demonstrating unprecedented contempt towards the public, his term of office, and the institution of the freedom of speech. The minister has tried to divert the public perception of the student protests to the only domain he can understand: the cynicism of court intrigues and clandestine maneuvers by instructing the editors to discard the previously written text and replace it with the Mr. Primorac’s truth that says that the students’ actions are a result of “the manipulations of SDP and HNS (Social Democratic Party and Croatian People’s Party)”. The fact that a daily newspaper, owned by the largest media concern in the country (EPH), has on Mr. Primorac’s request readily imposed self censorship is a worrying indicator of its social role. (more…)

We are approaching the end of the fifth week of the occupation. What we have been witnessing this week is an attempt by the champions of media-political normality to newly establish that normality. The minister who has been silent for a month appeared on the front page of an influential weekly, in a pose of fatherly benevolence, with arms wide open. Columnists and commentators of everything and nothing have offered themselves publicly as mediating instances between the Ministry and tongue-tied students who didn’t prove themselves adequate to recognize the right moment to give up their declared principles and switch to backroom licitations. (more…)

Yesterday was the day of pre-election silence in anticipation of the local elections. The fact that political parties are obliged to discontinue with mutual heckling and rhetorical rivalry on the day before the elections serves as an indicator of democratic maturity of all those involved. A day of law-imposed forbearance is seen as a threshold separating a regular democratic procedure from mere manipulation. (more…)

There have recently been complaints that the independent student initiative for free education is becoming stagnant. This implies that our inititiative needs to be justified over and over again, in order to create the illusion of progress, as if the right to free education was not a legitimate social and political goal in itself. There have also been complaints that we have erected a wall around us, disabling all attempts of communication. In fact, it is just the opposite; we have not erected a wall, but simply made it visible. Not even a series of outbursts of feigned cooperativeness on the part of the Ministry of Education can cover up the fact that the nominal representatives of the public interest fail to understand and take into consideration our request, which cannot be reduced to the extent proscribed by the bureaucratic elite. (more…)