Politics

ZAGREB, August 15, 2019 - A member of parliament and former Social Democrat deputy prime minister and social policy minister, Milanka Opačić, has joined the Labour and Solidarity Party of Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandić. According to information available on the parliament's website, Opačić ceased to be an independent member of parliament on August 12, continuing her term as a member of Bandić's party. Opacic left the Social Democratic Party in 2018. A month after her departure, she joined the parliamentary group of Bandić's party as an independent member of parliament. She was unavailable for comment on the reason for her…

ZAGREB, August 14, 2019 - The MOST Party's political secretary Nikola Grmoja formally launched in Rijeka on Wednesday the initiative of this Opposition party to collect signatures for its petition that the right to safe drinking water be protected in the Constitution. Grmoja said that the party would collect signatures of citizens throughout the country in a bid to ensure the protection of "Croatia's great water resources". The party insists that provision of water supplies to consumers should be conducted by public suppliers now when both in Croatia and abroad, corporations are trying to privatise water resources, said Grmoja. It…

ZAGREB, August 14, 2019 - The Jutarnji List daily on Wednesday ran an article on a decision of the High Magistrate Court to fine a local singer, Mario Roso, for uttering the salute "For the homeland ready" while singing the song of Marko Perković Thompson "Bojna Čavoglave" during a celebration of the Operation Storm's anniversary in the town of Makarska. The daily newspaper says that it has obtained a copy of the June 13 final ruling of the High Magistrate Court which reads that the above-mentioned salute had been used as the official salute of the 1941-1945 Ustasha movement that…

ZAGREB, August 14, 2019 - Science and Education Minister Blaženka Divjak on Tuesday welcomed the Constitutional Court's decision not to grant a request for the procedure for testing whether the introduction of IT as a compulsory subject in schools as of September is in compliance with the Constitution. She told the press in the town of Varaždin that the introduction of IT was in compliance with laws and the whole procedure had been conducted in a fair and legal manner. The complaint was submitted to the Constitutional Court in June by Tomislav Gojmerac, a member of the Zagreb-based Natural Family…

ZAGREB, August 13, 2019 - The certification of the project called "Tesla Ways" dedicated to scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla is being conducted by the Council of Europe and is to become the first official CoE Cultural Route dedicated to a researcher, the association called "the Cluster of Cultural Routes" reported on Tuesday. The project has been developed for several years by the Cluster and experts from Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and the USA. Thus, this cultural route encompasses thus two continents. The Tesla Ways is one of several proposals of Cultural Routes projects in the Danube Region made by the…

ZAGREB, August 13, 2019 - Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader Davor Bernardić said on Tuesday that the failure to call an extraordinary session of the parliament would constitute a gross violation of the Constitution but he would not comment on SDP presidential candidate Zoran Milanovic's position that calling such a session would set a precedent, noting that "everyone is entitled to their opinion". "The Constitution is clear, it says that an extraordinary parliament session has to be called within 30 days from the submission of such a motion," Bernardić told a news conference. He would not comment on Milanović's statement…

ZAGREB, August 13, 2019 - Presidential candidate Dejan Kovač, who is supported by the Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS), said on Tuesday that three years had passed since the Security-Intelligence Agency's (SOA) report on corruption in the judiciary and that it was time perpetrators were prosecuted and security services enjoyed full autonomy in their work. Noting that there had been much talk of changing presidential powers recently, Kovac told a news conference that he was not in favour of sudden changes because too much power in one person's hands in a young democracy could lead to autocracy. "For a young…

August 13, 2019 - A diplomatic row has erupted between Croatia and Serbia over the use of Nikola Tesla. What would the great man have made of it all? I want to take you back in time to a hotel room in New York in 1943. Lying on his deathbed at the age of 86 was one of the greatest geniuses ever to walk this planet. Although he did not achieve as much as he himself had hoped for the betterment of humanity, Nikola Tesla changed the world immensely and made it a better place.  After a lifetime of achievement,…

ZAGREB, August 12, 2019 - Following criticism from Serbia that Croatia is laying claim to the world-famous scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla, Croatian Foreign and European Affairs Minister Gordan Grlić Radman said on Monday that both Croats and Serbs could be proud of Tesla. The Serbian Culture and Information Ministry last week issued a statement condemning in the strongest terms what it described as an unacceptable attempt by Croatia to lay claim to Tesla. At the Expo 2020 exhibition in Dubai Croatia will present itself as a country of innovative projects, inventions and world-famous scientists, including Nikola Tesla, Faust Vrančić…

ZAGREB, August 12, 2019 - A member of parliament from the opposition MOST party, Robert Podolnjak, on Monday accused Constitutional Court President Miroslav Šeparović of having sided with the parliamentary majority and the government by not stating the court's position on an opposition motion for a special parliamentary debate on a vote of no confidence in the health minister, thus making it possible for the constitutional deadline of 30 days within which the parliament must discuss such motions, to expire. Podolnjak said this in a letter which he sent Šeparović because he believes that the Constitution was violated when a…