ZAGREB, August 10, 2019 – Constitutional Court President Miroslav Šeparović said on Friday that he was surprised by President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović’s response to the MOST party’s request to call an extraordinary session of the parliament to discuss a vote of no confidence in Health Minister Milan Kujundžić.
The Office of the President said earlier in the day that President Grabar-Kitarović would make a decision on MOST’s request if the Constitutional Court ruled that conditions for such a move had been created.
“If the Constitutional Court decides that conditions have been created for the parliament speaker to call an extraordinary session of the parliament and if the parliament speaker fails to do it, the president will decide on the request for an extraordinary parliament session in line with her constitutional powers,” the president’s office said.
“The President does not have the authority to call on the Constitutional Court to act in line with its powers and respond to motions put forward by members of parliament but she can, in line with Article 79 Paragraph 2 of the Constitution, submit a request for an extraordinary parliament session,” Šeparović told Hina.
He added that “under Article 104 of the Constitutional Law on the Constitutional Court, the Constitutional Court monitors compliance with the Constitution and laws and submits reports to the parliament about cases of non-compliance with the Constitution and laws, which are formulated at sessions of the Constitutional Court.”
“… in such cases, the Constitutional Court acts exclusively on its own initiative and when and if it deems it necessary. That is how it will proceed also in the case of the motion filed by a group of members of parliament,” said Šeparović.
In a comment on the statement from the Office of the President, MOST said in a Facebook post that after she criticised the health minister by saying that he had not done anything in his sector for the past three years, the president “should have finally put her foot down and started practicing what she preaches.”
“In a typical bureaucratic move, she has shifted responsibility onto the Constitutional Court, thus failing to exercise her presidential powers,” MOST said.
Sources at the president’s office said that MOST had set the course of action itself, given that it had asked the Constitutional Court for its position on the party’s motion, thus opting to wait for it.
More news about the MOST party can be found in the Politics section.
