Party leader Vesna Pusic told the press the meeting was a chance to exchange experience in the management of local projects and discuss current political matters. One of the topics was yesterday's general convention of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and its platform for November's parliamentary election.
Pusic and another senior HNS official, Radimir Cacic, said the HDZ had appropriated all its ideas from the HNS. Pusic said "the problem is not appropriating ideas, which become public good once they are presented, (but) the fact that appropriated ideas have to be implemented".
She also said that HDZ leader Ivo Sanader's statement "about the complete identification of party and state" was "worrying".
Pusic said it was because of political pluralism that the HDZ could appropriate the HNS' good ideas, and that the country could make headway only if various ideas and energies were confronted through competition.
Cacic said that the HDZ's platform for real estate investment funds was copied from his book.