Ex-PM Jadranka Kosor: Croatia Risks Becoming ‘Scorched Earth’ with Current Politics

Interviewing Jadranka Kosor, Croatia’s former prime minister and the only woman to have led the government since the creation of the modern Croatian state, invites a familiar journalistic urge: to look beyond what an office-holder will say into a dictaphone, to verify rumours and, occasionally, to probe the political gossip that never reaches the public.

Dictaphone off, I ask whether she thinks a particular European Parliament representative could become Croatia’s next president, as rumoured in political circles.

“Not if I run,” she replies – then bursts into laughter, watching the panic on my face as I glance at the switched-off recorder that failed to capture what would have been the political statement of the year.