ZAGREB, May 18, 2020 – Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic did not enter parliament via the main entrance on Monday to attend a meeting of his HDZ’s bench but did leave through it, booed by those who spent the night outside to protest against parliament dissolving without passing a law on Zagreb’s post-earthquake reconstruction.
As he was leaving, Plenkovic was briefly stopped by Tomislav Tomasevic, leader of the We Can! platform, who asked him why Construction Minister Predrag Stromar had said that the bill would be ready in two weeks, yet two months had passed since the earthquake, and what the problem was.
Plenkovic said he gave a statement on that to the press in parliament and that there was no point in repeating it given that because of the noisy protest, he could not be heard.
As he was walking to the government, one protester asked him why he was “dissolving parliament if the people of Zagreb have no place to live,” adding that they were hungry and faced enforcement procedures.
One of the protest leaders, Vili Matula, urged the prime minister over a megaphone to conduct the first public consultation in Croatia and asked him how he would justify the fact that tens of thousands of Zagreb’s residents had lost their homes in the March quake.
Plenkovic walked from parliament to the government amid booing, asked “Why are you running away” and told “Bandic, HDZ, enough of trade-offs,” a reference to Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandic.
