Madam President: Who is Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovich
Dmitry Kurkin
Although the Croatian national team did not win the World Cup final, one winner from the Croats at the awards ceremony in the “Luzhniki” was exactly. Personnel, in which President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, wearing a T-shirt of the national team, not paying attention to the pouring rain, greeted the participants of the match and colleagues in the podium with generous embraces, have already gone down in history. The Croatian analytical center Mediatoolkit declared it the main star of the final at all: according to their calculations, it was mentioned by 25% more often in the media materials devoted to the Sunday match than any of the players who entered the field.
Madam President in general tried to behave at the tournament as a simple cheerleader, and not as a politician whose status obliges him to attend exhibition events. Her treatment of the local team’s coach Zlatko Dalić and French President Emmanuel Macron aroused the enthusiasm of the Croatian press, although opponents considered it excessive. In her homeland they say that she flew to Russia as an economy class, exchanged VIP boxes for the ordinary rostrum, and from all the matches the national team missed only the semi-finals with England (the schedule of the NATO summit did not allow). And after the finals posted a photo from the national team dressing room. There was hardly any other politician in this championship who received a greater increase in subscribers in social networks, not to mention recognition outside his country. Media the second day asked questions: "Who is Mrs. Grabar-Kitarovic?" Let's try to find the answer.
In the headlines of the international press, the compound last name flashed for the first time four years ago. Then, 46-year-old Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, an opposition candidate, sensationally entered the second round of presidential elections, and in it, with a tiny margin of 1.48% of the votes, she beat her predecessor Ivo Josipovich. So she became the first woman president in the history of modern Croatia, and at the same time the youngest of the four elected national leaders. More importantly, for the first time in fifteen years, a representative of right-wing conservatives came to power in Croatia.
He advocates equal rights for women, but does not consider himself a feminist. Ratuet for the legalization of abortion, but emphasizes its commitment to the traditional values of Catholic Christianity
The victory of Grabar-Kitarovic took place in the conditions of the next political crisis in Croatia and with a low turnout. Against the background of a general distrust of politicians as such, a really fresh face appeared at the front of the stage, not associating with the generation of generals who fought the war of independence, nor with the discredited top of the Croatian democratic community (the party represented by Grabar-Kitarovich, one of the two main in the country), which in the early 2010s accused of corruption. An experienced internationalist and diplomat (when she joined the CDU in 1993, she was almost immediately sent to the North American department of the Foreign Ministry), a polyglot (she is fluent in three foreign languages and three more well-versed), a man in NATO (where she worked for four years Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy) - Grabar-Kitarovic was an excellent fit for the role of a candidate from the people. The fact that the future president grew up in the village also played into the image. And given the current surge of patriotism (columnist Boris Dejulovich calls the president’s world championship just as an early PR campaign for the next election), she may well remain at the helm of the country for another term: in the shaky political system of Croatia, which is covered by one major scandal after another, it certainly does not look like the weakest link.
In addition, it perfectly symbolizes the contradictions of the Balkan country in love with her. Kolinda, like Croatia itself, is torn between two chairs. It focuses on NATO, but does not want to spoil relations with Russia. It denies the extreme right and the legacy of the Ustashe (a radical Croatian organization that collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War), while skillfully flirting with Croatian nationalism. He advocates equal rights for women, but does not consider himself a feminist. Ratuet for the legalization of abortion, but emphasizes its commitment to the traditional values of Catholic Christianity. He supports the legalized practice of registering "life-long partnerships" for LGBT couples in 2014, but does not approve of the idea of same-sex marriage (which the CDU has long and consistently advocated).
In 2017, Forbes included Grabar-Kitarovich in the ranking of the most powerful women in the world, placing her in thirty-ninth place - somewhere between Oprah Winfrey and Elvira Nabiullina. And with all the estimated convention of the list, this is probably very accurate. She really is as similar to a progressive democratic leader as she is to the Russian women senators of the established state pattern. In today's Croatia, only such a course - to the best of a populist and compromise - can save her presidency.
Cover: Getty images