SDP Main Council will meet today and party president Zoran Milanović will submit his report on the negotiations to assemble parliamentary majority and form a new government. The Council will vote on his report and proposals, after MOST on Monday proposed a tripartite government which would be headed by a non-partisan prime minister. That proposal was made during a joint meeting between MOST, SDP and HDZ, reports Index.hr, Jutarnji List and Vecernji List on December 12, 2015.
The idea of such grand coalition has already been rejected by SDP’s junior coalition partners, which stated that such coalition would be contrary to the will of the voters and a return to a one-party system. It is widely expected that SDP will also reject MOST’s proposal.
Večernji List reports that SDP leadership planned to constitute the new Parliament next week, but that the plan will have to be delayed. The reason is that 15 members of parliament from MOST are still united, although SDP had hoped that at least some of them might cross sides and support SDP’s candidate for Speaker of Parliament, whose election is necessary for the Parliament to be formally constituted.
Unofficial sources claim that SDP has managed to gather 73-74 signatures of MPs who would be willing to vote for a candidate for Speaker which would be proposed by SDP’s coalition. That would mean that SDP president Milanović and his left coalition still need several more votes to reach the majority of 76 votes.
Regardless of the fact that the parliamentary session will have to be postponed, SDP is still counting on either current Speaker Josip Leko or HRID president Drago Prgomet being their candidates. Despite SDP’s attempts to break up MOST, that plan has so far failed, and the elected members of parliament from MOST met yesterday at a meeting which lasted three and a half hours. All members said they would remain with MOST. “If some of our MPs wanted to cross over to SDP, they would have already done it. There is no chance for MOST to be broken apart”, MOST leader Božo Petrov said after the meeting.
Some of the smaller parties confirmed they wanted the Parliament to finally be officially constituted. “We respect the work of Josip Leko as Speaker of Parliament, but we also do not have anything against Prgomet. We would also support a candidate of a third party if our two votes were crucial for the constitution of the Parliament”, said representatives of HDSSB which has two seats in Parliament.
Radimir Čačić, who is the only MP from Reformists, also thinks that the Parliament should be constituted. “It would be an act of responsibility. It would be important since Parliament is the basis of parliamentary democracy. There’s no excuses, no alibis, such as those that it might be expensive”, Čačić said.
