Mirela Holy speaks about some of the hot political topics of the moment.
Member of parliament and president of the ORaH party Mirela Holy talked on Saturday about the issue of regionalization of Croatia. She commented on the fact that the Istrian IDS party has criticized her position that Istria should not be a special region and that Croatia should be divided into four regions plus the City of Zagreb, reports Novi List on September 26, 2015.
“We need to distinguish the cultural identity and sense of belonging of people in a certain area and the territorial organization of Croatia in the public interest of all its citizens”, said Holy to reporters in Pula. “I think that all citizens of Croatia should strive for the least of their money to be used for the functioning of the public administration system, while at the same time public administration should provide a high quality service to all Croatian citizens”, she said. The ORaH party is organized on the regional basis as well, and has regional instead of county local organizations, continued Holy.
She cited the example of Denmark, which “in a very intelligent way reformed its territorial organization and the public administration system”. “These are inseparable processes and we believe that such issues should be put to a referendum, after the citizens are informed about them. We are not afraid of referendums, and we think that other political actors should also not be afraid”, stressed Holy.
Commenting on the decision of the government not to sign contracts for oil and gas exploration, Holy answered that her party supports that decision because they have been saying from the very beginning that it was a harmful project. “We are pleased that the government has given up on the signing of the agreements about the land exploration as well, because it was one of the major problems related to the project”, she said, adding that it was a very bad deal for Croatia according to which the state would receive only between 14 and 35 percent of revenues, “which is a scandalously low amount and not in the public interest”.
Asked to comment on the rhetoric of prime minister Zoran Milanović and his Serbian counterpart about the admission of refugees, she said that “the prime ministers should sit down and agree on specific issues and procedures about the locations where the refugees will cross the border and how they will deal with them”. “That would be in the interest of both the Croatian and Serbian citizens and the refugees themselves. We must not act like these are just numbers, and we need to see how to solve the problem with as little conflict as possible”, concluded Holy.
