The main opposition party will oppose some of MOST’s legislative proposals.
SDP is strongly opposed to urgent procedure for legislative changes that would limit budgetary funds which towns and municipalities can spend on salaries of their employees to 15 percent of their total revenues. If the parliamentary majority insists on the adoption of such proposals in the first days of the new Parliament, they will ask the Constitutional Court to assess the constitutionality of such a procedure, announced on Monday SDP’s MP Peđa Grbin, reports Večernji List on October 11, 2016.
Amendments to the Law on Financing of Local Governments Units are part of proposals which MOST said should be adopted before the new government in confirmed in Parliament. Grbin said there was no need to hurry with the adoption of such amendments given that MOST leader Božo Petrov said that new provisions would be implemented starting from January 2018.
Grbin said that it was still unclear how the law should look like and added that it was planned for the law to be adopted without a consultation period with local government officials. “This is particularly unacceptable if we take into account that they have announced that in 2018 they would also lower the income tax rate, which is a revenue of local government units”, said Grbin.
SDP also does not support urgent parliamentary procedure to adopt other legislative changes, and they say that the proposal that MPs who do not attend voting sessions will be published with 500 kuna would not prevent them to leave the chamber and prevent adoption of laws they consider harmful. “At the final session of last Parliament, SDP left the chamber and in that way made it impossible for the government to raise co-payments on health services. If such laws are again proposed, we are committed, as opposition, to leave the Parliament in order for it to be left without a quorum”, said Grbin.
SDP has still not decided on strategy for a debate on MOST’s “guarantees” because they do not know what exactly will be proposed, but the media have reported that they are considering various forms of obstruction, including a filibuster, which is a model popular at the US Senate and consists of making long speeches in order to prevent adoption of certain laws.
