Boris Raseta analyzes in the December 8, 1997 issue of the Split weekly 'Feral Tribune', the structure of the military and police budget in Croatia and its political implications.

Every fourth Kuna /Croatian currency/ of taxes we pay to the state we love goes to 'armed ministries'. This is how it will remain tomorrow: as much as three of 11 billion Deutch Marks /DEM/ from the state budget for 1998 will go to the army and the police. These days it has been announced that along with the shameful PDV, that a new building of the Ministry of Defence will be built, pompously named 'Croatian Pentagon', the building of which should cost at least ten million DEM.

The building should host the Ministry of Defence and the General Chiefs of Staff of the Croatian Army, and this, supposedly, to accommodate Western standards, that is, the NATO regulations.

The building of the main building of the Croatian police in the Kustosija region of Zagreb cost the Croatian taxpayers 148 million Kuna, that is, more than 42 million DEM, and it was financed with the money from the state budget. The Kustosija complex is supplied with most advanced technical equipment, worth 19 million Kuna (5 million DEM), while undertakings in the communal structure cost another 18,5 million Kuna.

Only during 1997, some 200 million Kuna have been spent to refurbish the Ministry of interior buildings and for the acquisition of new equipment, furniture and automobiles. At the insistence of general Markac, the special police got new uniforms, the pleasure which cost the citizens of this country only - 2 million DEM !

While it has been written a lot about the Serbian police a lot, the mushrooming of the police force in Croatia is slipping by almost unnoticed. According to the latest information, Croatian police employs today 34,000 men, which is equal to the number of policemen per capita in Miloseivc's police state of Serbia !

For the use of such enlarged Police ministry, some billion DEM are being allocated from the state budget each year. The 1997 budget was very precise - 3 billion and 269 million Kuna for the police, while for the next year, 1998, some 5,95 percent more will be allocated. The salaries of the policemen are in the scale of 2300 to 3500 Kuna, which is above the Croatian average.

Only this year, the MUP has spent for its business buildings some 64 million Kuna, meaning 18 million DEM, while next year this cost will rise to 125 million Kna, meaning - 36 million DEM.

The regime is obviously scared more and more of the public unrest, which could be more prominent in 1998 that in all previous years. The multitude of legal and personnel changes indicate to a conclusion that the current regime is scared of its people. The first signal of this were particularly restrictive changes in the Law on public gatherings. After that, the authority of the operatives of the Bureay for National Security (UNS) were raised, according to which the members of the secret police van arrest people on their liberal estimate, enter their apartments without warrants and similar. Transferred into law later on was the legalization of the use of the so called agents provocateurs, so that it would be easier to detect criminals. But it is not hard to envisage their activities of another type.

The Ministry of interior has also recently conducted personnel changes which guarantee that the police will not create surprises for the political leadership similar to the one when former police minister Jarnjak refused to use force against the demonstrators on the Zagreb Jelacic square. A right - wing personnel was installed in the meantime in the ministry, Ivan Penic was brought in. The public found out last year about the acquisition of the new eavesdropping equipment, which could listen to a large number of people at the same time, and the police did not deny the statements concerning the acquisition of a large quantity of rubber bullets, which, in general, are used against the demonstrators.

Does the truth lie with those that say that only barracks, police stations and jails are built in Croatia, along with a scattered football stadium and church ' Does this mean that Croatia is becoming a Sparta, although it dreamt of becoming Athens '