ZAGREB, October 28, 2018 – Social Democratic Party (SDP) vice president Zlatko Komadina said on Saturday this opposition party “doesn’t have much time to improve its rating” and that he did not arrange with Ranko Ostojić the demand for a vote of no confidence in president Davor Bernardić.
“We must go back to 20% and we will, and if that calls for personnel changes, they will be made,” he told reporters after a Main Committee session, referring to the SDP’s public opinion rating.
As for Bernardić’s stepping down, Komadina said there was always time for that but “there’s not much time to improve our rating.” He added that “everyone responsible should think of the party first and not of themselves.”
Asked which public opinion rating would sound the alarm, he said that would happen when a majority felt the president should step down. “If a majority of people think he should step down, I believe a reasonable president will step down,” he said, adding that he was against putchism, but that the motion for a no-confidence vote was “lege artis as it was made at the party’s bodies.”
As for rumours that he and SDP members from Primorje-Gorski Kotar County thwarted a deal to oust Bernardić, Komadina said he did not instruct anyone how to vote on the motion to put on the agenda of today’s Main Committee session a vote of no confidence in the president.
He dismissed as irrelevant speculation that he had agreed, in case Bernardić was ousted, to be the party’s acting president until an election convention. “There’s nothing to agree to. I am the vice president and if the president steps down for whatever reason, under the statute I run the party until elections.”
On Saturday, a motion for no confidence vote was unexpectedly put forward during a meeting of the party’s Main Committee, but was not included in the agenda since not enough members present voted for it. Earlier this week, the Commission for Conflict of Interest Prevention also launched proceedings against Bernardić.
