"The destruction of the bust (...) before a final stage of negotiations on membership in the European Union is no doubt an attack on Croatia's European prospects," Racan said at a press conference in Zagreb on Monday.
Racan said that the perpetrators "obviously wanted to send a message to democratic forces in Croatia that they are still around." The message was also directed at "those who until recently protected them or closed their eyes to their activities".
Asked who he meant by "those", Racan said that over the past years many members of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party had closed their eyes to the activities of "dark, radical right-wing forces".
Racan said that the HDZ-led government should prove that Croatia was a democratic and law-governed state capable of defending democracy, and that it should not reduce its response to condemnation of the incident, but to identify and severely punish the perpetrators.