ZAGREB, January 8, 2019 – Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) president Milorad Pupovac said on Tuesday that Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandić was destabilising parliamentarism.
Asked by reporters about actions taken by the USKOK anti-corruption office in connection with MPs who left their own parties to join the parliamentary group of Bandić’s party, Pupovac said there had been cases of crossing the floor before and that he doubted that actions taken by the authorities would yield results.
The situation in some parties is bad and people are leaving them for various reasons, he said, wondering what made MP Marija Puh more significant since she left the Croatian People’s Party. “Nothing, because before she only spoke out once a week and now not even once a month.”
I respect Mayor Bandić but there’s a limit to everything. He’s not an unreasonable man and should realise that this is an extreme destabilisation of parliamentarism in the country, regardless of intentions and motives. It’s necessary to keep a minimum of the credibility of MPs and of morality in parliament, said Pupovac.
He said he was not the whip of Bandić’s party, Robert Jankovics, who mentioned Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and his support to the government five times in two sentences, recalling that he expressed support to the prime minister three days ago and that he still supported him because he did not want to cause him problems.
Pupovac said it was necessary to change parliament’s Standing Orders so that all ethnic minority MPs could be in one group and not serve as rent-an-MP because thereby they deeply compromised minority seats in parliament.
He said the MPs who joined the parliamentary group of Bandić’s party had not signed the ruling coalition agreement nor taken positions on the government’s programme, policy and future, so in the best case scenario they could be considered an associated voting part of the ruling majority.
“For now, I see nothing more than that and as long as it stays so, it doesn’t have to be a problem for us, but it can become one if some parties start voicing concern about the circumstances under which their MPs are leaving them,” Pupovac said.
More news on the Zagreb mayor can be found in our Politics section.
