ZAGREB, May 31, 2018 – Prime Minister Andrej Plenković commented on Thursday on the announcement which “The People Decide “ civil initiative made earlier today, namely that their petition had enough signatures for a referendum to be called, saying that the authorities need to verify if the signatures were collected properly and whether it was done in accordance with the Constitution.
“It needs to be verified whether the proposed referendum questions are in line with the Constitution,” Prime Minister said. “This type of questions, which reduce minority rights through a referendum, completely miss the point, they are irresponsible,” Plenković said.
One of the two proposed questions suggests restricting minority MPs voting rights, barring them from voting on the country’s budget or the composition of the government. “In my opinion, any kind of infringement into the rights of minority rights goes against the Croatian Constitution, and I do not see how that could be decided on a referendum.” he said.
The prime minister also commented on the case of catching illegal migrants in the Donji Lapac areas, an incident which involved shooting and which resulted in two children sustaining injuries. He said he regretted the incident and the fact that children were injured. “Croatian police are protecting the borders from illegal migrations, I received the initial information from Interior Minister Davor Božinović and I regret that two children were injured. I think this is bad but I am confident the investigation will show what really happened and I expect the police to continue to protect our border and fight people smuggling, in this case from Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Plenković said.
Plenković also commented on cooperation with President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović who recently requested a joint session with the government to talk about demographic problems and issues of citizens with blocked bank accounts and which the prime minister rejected.
Plenković reiterated the government had implemented a number of measures to deal with these problems. He stressed that under the Constitution, the presidents dominant powers pertain to foreign affairs issues, the defence and security policy, the intelligence system and the functioning of the system. He added that the government has good dialogue with the president on these issues.
Commenting on speculations that efforts were being made to reduce the president’s powers, Plenković said he was impressed by various scenarios, but that none of them were true. The government and the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) have no ambition to reduce powers of the President of the Republic.
