Did HDZ President Andrej Plenković refer to HDZ as a mafia organization during his victory speech on election night, April 18, 2024? No, that's not true. The claim is circulating in a video created using AI-generated sound.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on April 18, 2024, under the title, translated from Croatian into English by Lead Stories staff:
Andrej Plenković's Victory Speech
This is what the video looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thursday, May 2, 17:14:28 2024 UTC)
In the video, Andrej Plenković is heard saying, translated from Croatian into English by Lead Stories staff:
I want to thank the Croatian people for electing us for the third time. However, you don't choose the mafia; the mafia chooses you. The Croatian Democratic Union will continue its theft, corruption and crime policy as in previous years. Boy, we had a good time! Theft is in our blood. We must not stop stealing because then it will not be HDZ/CDU. And now, let's move on, let's go rob Croatia even more. We will dismiss even more ministers and drive more youth out of the country. Only pensioners remain, to whom we will not provide higher pensions. Speaking of money, inflation is set to reach unprecedented levels. And food will continue to remain expensive. Currently, we rank second in the European Union in terms of inflation rate. Let's aim for the top spot. We will also neglect Slavonia and parts of the country affected by the earthquake. We will bring in even more Nepalese and deprive our people of democratic rights. And starting from tomorrow, let's embark on new tasks in the national interest of the Croatian people and the Croatian state. Thank you very much.
The original video (archived here) of the HDZ president's speech after the relative victory in the elections proves that Plenković did not pronounce these words. In reality, following the announcement of election results showing HDZ as the winner with a relative majority of 61 representatives, Plenković declared a convincing HDZ victory in the elections for the third time in a row and announced the formation of a parliamentary majority that will elect the third government. He criticized President Milanović and the opposition for flagrantly violating the Constitution and announced the continuation of successful HDZ policies.
The same digitally manipulated video of Plenković's speech reappeared on TikTok in other videos, like this one (archived here). The closed-caption line in the video began, translated from Croatian into English by Lead Stories staff:
The mafia chooses you. They have lined their pockets well.
This is what the video looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thursday, May 2, 17:15:14 2024 UTC)
On top of checking the original content of Plenković's speech, which clearly shows that false audio has been superimposed, Lead Stories staff have checked both videos using an AI-detection tool maintained by the University of Buffalo, DeepFake-O-Meter. The tool showed an extremely high likelihood that the sound in the video was machine-generated. Here is the result for the first video:
(Source: DeepFake-O-Meter screenshot taken on Thursday, May 2, 12:22:37 2024 UTC)
The second video has been determined with almost 100% certainty that the original sound was replaced with AI-generated audio.
(Source: DeepFake-O-Meter screenshot taken on Thursday, May 2, 12:31:48 2024 UTC)
The final parliamentary election results were announced on April 29, 2024. HDZ, with its partners, was the relative winner of the election, having won 61 out of 151 parliamentary seats, which is insufficient to form a government on its own. According to the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia (archived here), after receiving the final results of the election of members of the Croatian Parliament, the President of the Republic is authorized to convene the Croatian Parliament for its first session, which must be held no later than 20 days after the State Electoral Commission (archived here) publishes the final results.
