To begin with, I am hardly surprised by your silence. My letter, sent to you exactly a month ago, remains unanswered even though it broaches an important if ticklish subject (“Golf Development in Croatia: A Letter to Croatian President Ivo Josipović,” February 15, 2011). Your predecessor was silent, too, and on the very same subject. And so were nearly all public officials I have addressed after my return to Croatia following more than thirty years in America and Britain. But silence is only an index of the undemocratic character of Croatian government. This is something you can help change. Your example could work wonders, or so I would sincerely hope.

Public office means communicating with the public and not only winning the elections. It means having an office capable of proper interaction with everyone who addresses a public official for any reason whatsoever, as well as under all circumstances, regardless of all other political exigencies. Here, there is no difference between the president of a country, a governor of a region, or a mayor of a municipality. But the president can still offer some guidance to all the others serving in the government by communicating with the public in an exemplary way.

Therefore, I would like to propose that you instruct everyone in your office, which is probably quite ample, to copy the established ways in which presidents of democratic countries communicate with the public. That is one of the duties of the president’s office in civil societies for at least a century already. Letters directed to you should be answered as soon as possible, but certainly within a period of at most a month. Mind you, communicating with the public may vastly improve your own grip of the political situation you face. And the same holds for all the public officials down the line. Democracy minus communication is a travesty of the very principles that underpin the entire social order.

Addendum (June 14, 2023)

I am happy to report that I have been communicating via electronic mail with Ivo Josipović, ex-president of Croatia, ever since I have won my case in Strasbourg in 2021. By that time, he was back at the Faculty of Law at the University of Zagreb. The same day I received the court’s decision, I forwarded it to Josipović together with my book about my struggle with Croatian courts. I added a few words about his cabinet’s failure to communicate with me a decade earlier. He responded within hours. While he was still president, he explained, he was not allowed to interfere with judicial cases in any way. For that reason, someone from his cabinet must have “ignored” my letters. That is, chucked them into the dustbin. That was wrong, he added, and he begged me to accept his apology. Even though he could not do anything concerning my case, he wrote, an explanation would have been in order on the part of his crew. And he congratulated me for my victory in Strasbourg.

Shortly afterwards we exchanged a few more messages along these lines. I sent him the court decision from Strasbourg together with my spreadsheet following all the court’s decisions concerning cases from Croatia over the six years that my own case took from acceptance to the ultimate decision. I suggested that my spreadsheet could be useful to his students. All of our messages were exchanged in a friendly tone that delighted me at the time.

Last week I also sent to Josipović a link to my recent appearance in a Croatian television show concerning my case in Strasbourg, as well as the last version of my book on this longwinded topic. I also explained that I had accepted this engagement only to promote the lawyer who represented me at the European Court of Human Rights. This way he might help others from Croatia seeking justice in vain, I argued. The former president congratulated me once again after watching the show, and he added a few words about Croatian courts. “Actually,” he concluded, “your argument is shared by quite a few about the judiciary in this country—it amounts to horror and catastrophe.” I was over the moon, of course. One way or another, I simply had to add a few words to this letter of old.

By the way, Josipović is sixty-five years of age already. To the best of my understanding, this is the retirement age for professors at the University of Zagreb. I sincerely hope that he will find a way of staying at his faculty for a few more years, though. Given his straightforward attitudes toward Croatian courts, he may be able to push things forward in the years to come. Both his colleagues and his students would benefit from his ability to communicate with the public, as witnessed by our exchanges the last few years. The same holds for his associates at the Social Democratic Party of Croatia, which has been one of the leading parties in this country since its independence a bit more than three decades ago. Given all the givens, I cannot shake off the hope that things may get better even in Croatia in spite of all the evidence I have accumulated since my “return” to this country two decades ago. Alas, hope is one of the greatest flaws of the human species! Myself included, it goes without saying.