“400,000 people gave their signatures in impossible conditions and a clear message was sent to the government and the Constitutional Court that they should not play with the people’s will and that they should let the referendum happen. If they intend to stall, it will backfire on them, because this time people will not forget it,” Petrov told reporters in Pazin, where a branch of the Bridge party was established.
Commenting on President Zoran Milanović’s statement of Friday that the incumbent government was the most corrupt government Croatia has ever had and that the prime minister is protecting his corrupt associates, Petrov said that it was a fact the government had not done anything to rid the state of corruption.
“It is a fact that they opted to keep the Attorney General who was recently found to have protected a corrupt government minister and who shelved her case without having either dismissed or opened it. It literally took a European prosecutor to show what has to be done,” Petrov said, adding that “the state does not work in people’s interest.”
He noted that topics other than the relationship between the president and the prime minister were much more important at present.
“Inflation, a serious price growth, 20% of people are on the brink of poverty. Given the coronavirus crisis and inflation, the situation can only get worse and I would like the president and the prime minister to deal with that,” Petrov said, pointing to lack of any progress in the post-earthquake reconstruction of Zagreb and Sisak-Moslavina County.
After 62 opposition MPs collected signatures for a motion to have Construction Minister Darko Horvat replaced, Petrov said that it was only normal the ruling HDZ party, which holds the majority in the parliament, would reject the motion but that that did not mean that its decision was right.
“I would be ashamed if I had to defend the minister in the parliament, even if he were my brother, I would tell him not to embarrass himself and to step down,” he said.
