Open letter: Politicians ready for Domino!
The Domino Association is a civil society organization active since 2003 and by all objective parameters is a small organization that, however, implements valuable programs that generate considerable public interest. The main reason for this are the topics we deal with and our biennial creative and innovative approach to them. All of this has made Domino and our many programs recognizable and appreciated not only in the domestically, but also internationally.
However, during the political campaigns of the past super-election year, and especially in recent months, our organization, as well as the entire NGO sector, have been frequently used in irresponsible political taunts and slanders by politicians in their fight for the attention and political support of voters. Information, which is otherwise publicly available to everyone, has been deliberately and selectively manipulated to defame and create an atmosphere of fear and insecurity for civil society organizations.
As politicians unfoundedly and flatly questioned the transparency of public tenders, Domino’s reputation has been damaged, by our organization being continuously singled out in their insinuations about Domino’s clientelistic connection with the political party Možemo, because one of its members, Mr. Gordan Bosanac, was also one of the founders of Domino in 2003. year. His connection with the Domino association ended in 2014, 11 years ago, long before the formation of the Možemo party or the beginning of any political engagement by our former associate. Since 2014, as in all previous years, Domino has competed with its programs and projects in a series of public tenders in Croatia and abroad. Recent writings suggest that the Domino association has only just discovered public tenders or has been participating in them.
However, to this day, the largest individual grants from the City of Zagreb for our projects were in 2018 (a total of EUR 80,000 for two EU projects), but in recent political settlements over our backs, this was not mentioned, because it was precisely those who were in power in the City of Zagreb at the time who were settling the scores over us. Probably because by citing these facts in their attacks, it could be concluded that we were also implementing valuable projects that were recognized by the City of Zagreb, and thus the entire thesis about irregularities in the implementation of the tender would fall flat, except that it would show that all these politicians were ready for Domino even then.
We emphasize most strongly that no connection between the Domino association and any party has ever existed, does not exist today, nor will there be in the future. We reject with disgust all insinuations and accusations of clientelism as inflammatory, manipulative, malicious, and defamatory.
The discourse used is intentionally defamatory, data is handled in a blanket and one-sided manner, taken out of context, creating a distorted and harmful image of our work, as well as the general functioning of civil society organizations. This creates political pressure to the detriment of all cultural, activist and advocacy programs, not only those of the Domino association, and regardless of the fact that our association was singled out in particular based on incorrect assumptions and accusations.
We are not naive, of course this is not about the amount of funds or subsidies from public funds that we have been granted, literally every single one, as a result of publicly conducted tenders (at the local and national level) to which we regularly apply with quality projects and in which we meet the prescribed criteria. More than twenty years of experience in the non-governmental sector has taught us how to write application forms and implement projects, and for the survival of the Domino association and our programs we do not need anyone’s ‘help’ outside the set parameters that are prescribed by any public tender.
It is quite clear to us that the goal of the political attacks is to normalize the political discourse that ultimately wants to end the rights of the LGBTIQ+ community, women’s rights to equality and encourage xenophobia. The programs for which we are attacked in turn deal with exactly these topics and we recognize the reasons for the attacks in homophobia, misogyny and xenophobia, and this is the only political discourse that is exposed through all these attacks. Not only the work of civil society organizations rests on the transparent implementation of public tenders, but also the programs of the entire cultural sector in Croatia, including public institutions in culture, but also other areas such as sports and social programs. However, political opportunism is focused on the Domino association and on “queer”, “Arab queer” and “feminist programs”, calling them into question and instrumentalizing our work for regular and cheap daily political calculations. No, we are not naive, it is clear to us that the attacks on programs with these topics will not stop, and that through them the functioning of the entire sector of civil society and culture is called into question with the ultimate goal of control and silencing.
For the purpose of defamation, manipulative terminology such as ‘donation’ was regularly used when talking about the results of grants for public needs in culture or ‘they got’, ‘they were given’ and the like, which undermines the concept of work in culture in general. The sums of all the grants were bombastically emphasized to make it easier to be shocked by the amount, but the number of projects and programs behind those totaled figures was regularly omitted. If they had done that, then their theses would no longer be so sound, because it sounds better that Domino “got” 235,000 euros, than the same information with the rest of the sentence that is regularly missing – that these are total subsidies for the implementation of everything that follows:
19 different projects during 2024 alone, involving more than 150 artists and other collaborators in the implementation of the following activities:
– performance of 71 plays and performances throughout Croatia and abroad (a large part of which was created in our production and co-production)
– publishing 2 books,
– 4 exhibitions with 70 artworks,
– production and exhibition of 9 works by visual artists
– 12 artist residencies of 1 to 2 weeks in Croatia and across Europe,
– 3-day film program with screenings of 6 feature films,
– a 3-day conference with 30 participants and numerous panels
– a week-long educational program with 56 participants from all over Europe…and the number of our activities during one year does not stop there – because during 2024 there were numerous other activities of presentations, discussions, conversations, mentoring activities that we have not included here.
Having stated and enumerated in this way, the amount of the prepared and implemented program is not usable for the purposes of attacks by those who know nothing about culture, the civil sector, and especially it was deliberately avoided by those who know, but deliberately and maliciously manipulate the public’s perception.
Given that individuals and institutions who have no knowledge or experience in evaluating cultural programs have also embarked on this journey, we will help them. Anyone who wants to do more serious research can find what follows on various official websites, because everything was public and transparent, and we are making this summary not with the intention of discovering something new and unknown, but solely to help those who randomly and casually dig through data and pull numbers out of context. Our programs with links to competitions and competition results during the controversial year of 2024, with illustrations and contextualization of each program, are available at this LINK .
If you compare all of our data and numbers with the same program elements of some other projects in the competitions where we received grants for our programs, you will get a very clear picture of why Domino received these grants from the competition organizers. We recommend this to everyone who wants to evaluate and weigh the relationship between financing, execution, and contribution to the public interest of our association. Those who just want to attack and smear us without arguments because of ideological disagreements or their homophobia, of course, do not need to bother with this data at all. Their ideological hatred and their public statements of untruths will still be quite sufficient for them.
We invite the organizers of public calls, especially the City of Zagreb, the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, the Office for NGOs of the Government of the Republic of Croatia, the National Foundation for the Development of Civil Society and the Kultura nova Foundation, to announce these attacks, which we primarily interpret as attacks on the non-governmental sector. Allowing this discourse of political attachment to spread over civil society organizations affects the stability and normal functioning of organizations and the entire cultural and non-governmental sector.
With respect,
Zvonimir Dobrović
President of the Domino Association
in Zagreb, 16.6.2025.
