ZAGREB, May 31, 2018 – The “Truth about the Istanbul Convention” civil initiative said on Wednesday it had asked the Public Administration Ministry for an additional 15 days for their signature-gathering campaign for a referendum to rescind the ratification of the convention because they were prevented from collecting signatures in some places.
Addressing a press conference earlier in the day, representatives of the initiative announced that data collected by then showed that they had 371,821 signatures, adding that petition lists were still coming in from all over Croatia. They said they believed that they would have collected the number of signatures required to call the referendum.
The initiative started collecting signatures for the referendum to change the election legislation on May 13 and ended on Sunday, May 27. They had to collect approximately 375,000 signatures, which accounts for 10% of the electorate, in order for a referendum to be called.
The Croatian parliament ratified the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence on April 13 with 100 votes in favour, two abstentions and 30 votes against. Croatia is the 30th of 47 members of the Council of Europe to have ratified the convention and 18th EU member state to do so.
