Number of Ministries will be gradually reduced, HDZ suggests 17 current ones plus one new Ministry
Much anticipated meeting between HDZ and MOST took place on January 4, 2016. Leaders of Most and HDZ, Božo Petrov and Tomislav Karamarko confirmed that they will both be Vice Presidents of the Croatian Government while there is still no news on future ministers.
As previously reported, MOST publicly requested that they head the Ministry of internal affairs, and their spokesperson, Nikola Grmoja explained why, saying that there is a need for a more efficient fight against corruption and crime. “I believe we have competent people within our party to deal with crime and corruption. That is why we entered politics on the national level in the first place” said Božo Petrov.
Petrov stated that there are some things in other Ministries that MOST is interested in, but he will not presume anything before a joint decision is made by both parties. He also announced that some changes will be made since both MOST and HDZ agree Ministries have to be rationalized:”We agree that some ministries and agencies have to be rationalized. It is important to define a time period for its implementation” he said, adding that they spoke briefly about forming a large state holding company:”We only touched on that subject, but that is a far more complex story than the Ministries so we will have to discuss it further. We can see some positive things in this suggestion, like the depoliticisation of staff I have to run it by other members of MOST and we will talk about it during our meeting tomorrow”
When asked how many Ministries Most wants, Petrov avoided a direct answer: “We will insist on those Ministries for which we can offer experts. It is important to finish these negotiations in a polite manner so I would leave that part open. We said for which departments we believe we can offer experts. We know that the Ministry of Internal Affairs is very important to us as well as the Ministry of Justce. We want to tackle to largest problems of the Croatian society. We believe the other side will support us on our quest” leader of MOST stated.
President of HDZ Tomislav Karamarko announced that they will cut down the number of Ministries “We will decrease the number of Ministries but we still don’t want to say which ones since MOST has to discuss it on their meeting tomorrow, but our idea is to have 17 ministries plus one new one – Ministry of Family and Immigration, considering our severe demographic situation. This was a good foundation for a discussion, and I agree that we will not be able to make any big changes in the next 15 days. We have to wait for MOST to discuss it with their National council and we expect some suggestions from them too. What we want is to start working as soon as possible” said Tomislav Karamarko.
After the first Parliament assembly we will start working with some form of a Government with the same number of Ministers as we have now, and then we will gradually reduce them and rationalize all operations within remaining Ministries” he added.
