Hrvoje Bielen contacted me by electronic mail earlier today. He said that he had not read any of my writings lately, and so he wanted to know how I was doing. Also, he wanted to know what was going on with my court ordeal with the former mayor of Motovun, Slobodan Vugrinec. I responded with a few words. And I mentioned that my appeal with the Constitutional Court of Croatia was still awaiting their attention after nearly three years. But then I checked my writings about the matter, and was surprised to find several pieces in which I reported that I expected the resolution of the misery by about this year at the latest. So many years back, I could not even imagine how long the whole thing would take. In my response to Hrvoje, I mentioned that the case for insult might take as many as ten years to be resolved, either in Croatia or in Strasbourg. That would take it all the way to 2018. Only a few hours later, I feel that my assessment was way too optimistic. What is mere ten years for Croatian courts?! Once again, I am a victim of my peerless optimism.

Addendum (September 28, 2016)

The highest court in Croatia decided against my appeal close to the end of 2014, but I learned about it more than three months later (“The Decision,” March 8, 2015). And my case against Croatia has been with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for more than a year already (“Bon versus Croatia,” April 13, 2015). I expected it to be resolved in about a year, but I was mistaken. Judging by the stream of Strasbourg’s decisions, which I follow with great care on the World Wide Web, I am likely to wait for a few more years. In fact, I would be rather lucky if everything were over by 2018, as I guessed in this piece. I did my best to sound kind of pessimistic when I penned it two years ago, but this is likely to be yet another example of my optimism. Peerless optimism, to be exact. To my chagrin, Strasbourg does not appear to be far ahead of Croatian courts in terms of speed.