ZAGREB, January 17, 2020 – The initiative “Zagreb is calling you” and the associations Siget, the Green Action, and The Right to the City, have announced a new protest against Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandić, to be staged on February 1 in Zagreb’s central Ban Josip Jelačić Square.
The activists said the reason for the new protest against the mayor, after two were held during a recent campaign for presidential elections, was that Bandić “is keeping the ‘Manhattan Project’ and valuable city land for his cronies, while leaving residents of Zagreb to drown in garbage whose collection he plans to charge for even more.”
The activists believe that Bandić’s power in Zagreb would be much smaller if he did not enjoy the firm support of Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) deputies in the city assembly.
“Prime Minister Andrej Plenković has decided to tie his fate to then USKOK indictee and he bears full responsibility for Bandić’s maltreatment of Zagreb residents,” said the activists.
They said they had decided to organise the protest on February 1 because a few days after the protest the City Assembly would be deciding on changes to the city’s urban development plan, of which many are problematic, which was why members of the public had submitted more than 30,000 objections but they were all rejected.
“We need an urban development plan that deals with the consequences of climate change, provides answers to the burning problem of lack of affordable housing, and offers an answer to the chaos in the system of waste management and problems created by Bandić,” the protest organisers said.
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