DC vice president Josko Moric told a news conference in Zagreb on Monday that after the coalition between the two parties broke up on the national level, HDZ began mounting pressure on DC members.
The partnership links were severed when Prime Minister Ivo Sanader recently decided to dismiss Vesna Skare-Ozbolt, the DC chief, from the post of Justice Minister and appoint HDZ official Ana Lovrin as her successor.
Moric said that HDZ had offered the DC leader in Slavonski Brod County, Frano Piplovic, the post of assistant minister or a diplomatic career if he joined the HDZ and dissolved the DC branch in that eastern area. Piplovic was a DC deputy in the parliament until Skare-Ozbolt's return to the Sabor.
Moric informed reporters that two state secretaries from the DC ranks had asked to be erased from the list of DC members. Those are Nikola Ruzinski from the Environmental Protection Ministry and Robert Laginja from the Agriculture Ministry.
DC leader Vesna Skare Ozbolt announced that her party would move a corruption suppression strategy to the parliament's agenda if the government failed to do so at its next session.