Politics

ZAGREB, June 22, 2020 - President Zoran Milanovic said in his congratulatory note on Monday on the occasion of the national Antifascist Struggle Day that present-day Croatia would not have existed without the WWII anti-fascist resistance movement in the country. Croatia marks Antifascist Struggle Day on June 22 in memory of 22 June 1941 when the first antifascist unit was formed in the Brezovica forest near Sisak in the then occupied Europe. The Croatian president writes in his message posted on his Facebook account that "Antifascist Struggle Day revives memories of "the unique uprising in 1941, the uprising of our people, who…

ZAGREB, June 21, 2020 - Apart from Croatia, out-of-country voting in parliamentary elections set for July 5 will be organised in 42 other countries, five fewer than at the presidential elections held in December 2019, the State Electoral Commission has said. Elections for the tenth Croatian parliament will not be held in Algeria, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia and the South African Republic. The number of voters in those countries who voted in the last election is small. A total of 88 voters voted in the last presidential election, and 126 in the last parliamentary election. The elections in Croatia will be held…

June 21, 2020 - Croatia's bloated bureaucracy is not sustainable. Glas Poduzetnika data scientist Nikola Strahija uses big data to show how merging municipalities can save 1.29 BILLION kuna (170 million euro) a year.  When I first moved to Hvar back in 2002, I was surprised to learn that my new hometown of Jelsa had its own mayor and tourist board director. There were only 1,750 people in the entire municipality to administer. I was even more surprised to then learn that this beautiful island of 11,000 permanent residents had no less than FOUR mayors and FIVE tourist board directors,…

ZAGREB, June 21, 2020 - Minister of the Interior Davor Bozinovic, who heads the national COVID-19 response team, has said that currently there are no plans to introduce additional compulsory measures in the fight against the novel coronavirus and there are also no indications that parliamentary elections could be postponed. Speaking in an interview with the RTL broadcaster on Saturday evening, Bozinovic called on everyone to invest additional effort and do what was necessary to prevent the spreading of the disease. "The measures that are being adopted depend on the current situation, and we do not believe that more restrictive measures are necessary because our epidemiologists…

ZAGREB, June 20, 2020 - Public Administration Minister and HDZ official Ivan Malenica said on Saturday that after it won the elections, the party would reduce the number of ministries, halve the number of local officials and do its best to make public administration efficient. "We will digitise local government and connect it with central government registers and numerous services, applications and platforms," Malenica told a news conference. Digital signature to be introduced for entire country, public administration He added that the HDZ would introduce the digital signature for the entire state and public administration by the end of its term. "An…

ZAGREB, June 20, 2020 - Dalija Oreskovic of the Party with a First and Last Name said in Rijeka on Saturday that Croatia was not divided into the right and left camps but into those who stole and those who had been robbed, and that, she said, should be the main topics of the election campaign, "instead of wombs". Presenting candidates of the coalition comprising her party, Pametno and Fokus, Oreskovic said that the antagonism between the SDP and the HDZ prevented people from seeing what was happening with the country. "Our future depends on how many people will realise that what…

ZAGREB, June 20, 2020 - Homeland Movement leader Miroslav Skoro on Saturday criticised former President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandrokovic for launching "a middle-finger coalition" against him, after his statement about raped women and abortion caused an outrage. Skoro's statement, made during a recent election debate, that if a woman becomes pregnant after being raped, she should agree with her family what to do next, has triggered an avalanche of reactions and comments on social media, especially among women, who showed him their middle finger in protest. Grabar-Kitarovic joined them on Thursday by posting a photograph…

ZAGREB, June 20, 2020 - Social Democratic Party (SDP) and RESTART coalition leader Davor Bernardic spoke at an election rally in Split on Saturday, noting that the coastal city was unsafe to live in many regards. That, he said, refers primarily to violence, lack of jobs, as well as the fate of people who had lived or were living off tourism. He noted that Croatia as a whole was an unsafe country, with many pensioners having low pensions. "Many people in Croatia lack safety because they are losing their jobs due to the government's belated decisions... permanent seasonal workers lack safety…

ZAGREB, June 20, 2020 - Prime Minister and HDZ leader Andrej Plenkovic said on Saturday that the HDZ would invest maximum effort in the reconstruction of Zagreb and its historical centre damaged in the March 22 earthquake. Speaking at a presentation of party candidates running in the July 5 elections in Constituency No. 1, Plenkovic said that the damage to the city had been estimated at €11.5 billion euros. He said it would take at least ten years for the city to be reconstructed in such a way "to be safe and for its citizens to be given what they…

ZAGREB, June 19, 2020 - The state should equip the Croatian Air Force with something new and state of the art because what we have now has given its best, President and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, Zoran Milanovic said on Friday in the Zemunik airbase. Attending a ceremony presenting pilot flight badges to cadets in the 24th generation of Air Force pilots, President Milanovic said that each commander is as great as much as he cares for his people and "doesn't treat them as cannon fodder." "If we raise that to the level of the state, our state should, I…