Croatia’s opposition party confronted their government this week, and demanded the Interior Minister resign — over remarks he made about YouTube videos! It’s the latest chapter in a messy turmoil that’s been brewing since May, when the entire opposition party walked out of the Croatian parliament to protest the Minister’s remarks.

Minister Ivica Kirin had said then that he couldn’t appear before Parliament to address the controversy because of a scheduling conflict which kept him out of the city — which triggered the mass walk-out by the Social Democrats. (Their party constitutes nearly one-fifth of all members of the Parliament’s legislators.) Since then, according to one site, the controversy has only simmered in the intervening weeks before the new session began this week.

But what exactly did he say? The videos were montages of clips showing the Interior Minister misspeaking. He was quoted in local media as saying he knew the opposition created the videos, and he’d discovered this through “the servers.”

Was his investigation of YouTube’s servers authorized by YouTube, demanded the opposition party this week, as well as Google Inc? If not, “you admitted to having committed a crime, violating the laws on confidentiality and security. So, my question is: When are you going to resign?”

Wait a minute — YouTube’s servers are in Mountain View. How could rogue Croatian agents be investigating their servers to unmask uploaders of embarrassing YouTube videos? And to confuse things more, Interior Minister Kirin said, three weeks ago, that he never said any such thing; the local press was mis-attributing a comment made by another reporter. He says now that the opposition’s fierce insistence on their version of events only “confirms rumors” that they were the source of the controversial videos.

It’s the kind of fiery controversy that attracts the media, and one blog suggests Kirin had already received orders to make fewer public appearances to avoid the possibility of triggering controversial statements. To fan the flame, the entire opposition party walked into Parliament today wearing t-shirts showing the YouTube logo in a crosshair, according to the blogger, and “It should be also mentioned that his mispronunciation of the ‘youtube’ into ‘jubito’ has created a whole new industry in Croatia, so you now have web sites called jubito (net, com, info, org), as well as a whole line of apparel and fashion accessories. The blogger says is an “extremly graphical curse” in Croatia,
but according to Reuters, “The name Yubito stuck and started appearing on T-shirts until Kirin threatened to file lawsuits after he left office.”

While it may be a manufactured controversy, it’s certainly good politics. The opposition party is a strong contender heading into a national election this fall. And in a heartening development, videos have even appeared on YouTube lampooning the new leader of the opposition party. The Associated Press asked some political scientists what they made of the case. Their conclusion?

Croatia politics have finally made the jump to the internet.

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Entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 8:42 pm under YouTube.

Read more entries by David Cassel.
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