ZAGREB, January 20, 2019 – Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader Davor Bernardić said on Saturday that the opposition party was ready for the European Parliament elections, which will be held in May, and for early parliamentary elections if they are called.
Bernardić said that the current makeup of the government did not mirror the will of citizens and insisted that the makeup of the Croatian parliament was made up based on “a political corruption”.
“The SDP is ready any time to take over responsibility and pull Croatia from this morass of political corruption, clientelism, sinecurism and crime. We have been able to save Croatia two times so far, and we are also now able to do that,” Bernardić said at a meeting of SDP women’s forum in Zagreb.
During this meeting he said that his party would table its proposal of the new abortion legislation, suitable for the 21st century.
Termination of pregnancy should be available and free of charge to all women, he said in that context.
As for the recent incident in Vukovar in which a Serb teenage boy was assaulted at a bus station and reporters’ question if the incident could be connected with Vukovar Mayor Ivan Penava’s statements and video footage of Serb students refusing to stand for the Croatian anthem, Bernardić said that in Croatia hatred against others was again being spread, and that hatred against others, based on their ethnicity, had recurred.
He thinks that it is high time for HDZ leader and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković to opt either for Penava or for the Croatian Serb leader Milorad Pupovac whose Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) is a part of the ruling coalition.
Bernardić ruled out any possibility for the SDP to support the incumbent President Kolinda Grabar Kitarović’s candidacy for her second term.
The speculations about the SDP backing of Grabar-Kitarović’s decision to rerun for the presidency have appeared since both the HDZ and the SDP members of the parliamentary Domestic Policy and National Security Committee voted for the committee’s conclusion that the Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA) made no wrongdoings in the treatment of former presidential advisor Mate Radeljić.
The committee chairman Ranko Ostojić of the SDP said then that the Radeljić case was over for the committee.
More news on the SDP can be found in the Politics section.
