Serious discussions about administrative reform in Croatia takes place among the main political parties.
After a one-day break due to anniversary of the fall of Vukovar, MOST’s negotiations with SDP and HDZ about forming new government will continue later today. According to the announced schedule, the topics will include public administration and local government organization. SDP has announced that it is willing to reduce the number of counties in Croatia, which was one of MOST’s demands during the pre-election campaign, reports Novilist on November 20, 2015.
Although Prime Minister Zoran Milanović has so far been reluctant to change the number of counties, his party is now open to that possibility. They have some specific proposals about the future regional organization of Croatia which their negotiators, Arsen Bauk, Orsat Miljenić, Branko Grčić, Tulio Demetlika (IDS), Boris Milošević (SDSS) and Predrag Štromar (HNS) will present to the representatives of MOST (Ivan Kovačić, Robert Podolnjak and Mate Ribičić).
That would mean that Split, Šibenik and Zadar Counties would be merged into one, while Dubrovnik and Istria would remain separate counties. SDP feels that this flexible attitude could be their advantage in comparison with HDZ, given that HDZ and its coalition partners remain strongly opposed to changing the number of counties. “We want to keep the counties and to strengthen the system by raising the quality and efficiency”, said on Tuesday HDZ’s Ivana Maletić.
However, in addition to forming the new government, SDP is considering ways how to constitute the new parliament. Constitution stipulates that President has to convene the first session no more than 20 days after the election results are officially proclaimed. The election process has still not been finished, so the 20-day period could start sometime during the next week.
Parliament constitutes itself by electing its speaker with a majority vote, provided that at least half of deputies take part in the voting. That means that speaker can theoretically be elected with just 39 votes. In the event that the speaker is not elected during the first session, the president shall convene another session. That has never happened before, because until now the parliament has always elected its speaker at the very first session. This time, it is realistic to assume that the negotiations about forming the next government will not end prior to the first session of parliament and that at that point there will be no clear parliamentary majority.
The first session will be chaired by Josip Leko, speaker of the last parliament. His task is to chair over the election of the new speaker. SDP plans to propose for the speaker a representative of MOST, probably their party chairman Božo Petrov. Of course, he would previously have to agree with his nomination. Another possibility under consideration by SDP, if the coalition talks are not finished by the first session of the parliament, is to elect a kind of caretaker speaker, perhaps the oldest member, so that Croatia would at least have a new parliament. The “real” speaker would then be elected if and when a majority in parliament is formed.
