ZAGREB, May 21, 2018 - The civil initiative The People Decide, which is collecting signatures to call a referendum on amendments to the Election Law, said on Monday that it was filing constitutional complaints against the town authorities of Rijeka and Samobor, claiming that they had denied their residents the right to express their opinion regarding the referendum and adding that it would sue the authorities in the towns of Zagreb, Osijek and Rijeka because they had charged a tax on the referendum.
"Suits are being prepared against Rijeka and Samobor because they have curtailed citizens their constitutional right to express their opinion regarding the referendum. We will also sue Zagreb, Osijek and Rijeka because they are charging their citizens a tax on the referendum, which is illegal. This is dual taxation because those spots (for signature collection) are a public good and citizens are already paying taxes, contributions and surcharges for their use in those cities," Zvonomir Troskot said.
Considering that the constitutional complaint will only be resolved after signatures have been collected, Troskot called on the Ministry of Public Administration to respond and have inspectors sent out to investigate whether the towns concerned were acting in line with the constitution or illegally. The NGO called on Public Administration Minister Lovro Kuščević to state what had been done with regard to the situation in those towns that it intends to sue.
Troskot recalled that in an interview with the Večernji List daily, Minister Kuščević said that he would protect the right of citizens to collect signatures for a fairer election system in line with the constitution. Troskot wondered if the minister was possibly referring to the constitution of the People's Republic of Korea as their civil initiative was not protected either by Croatia's constitution or its laws.
He added that Rijeka Mayor Vojko Obersnel of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) referred to four constitutional experts who said that the referendum questions were constitutional, as well as all citizens who had already signed the referendum petition, as sick minds.
Asked to comment on the fact that numerous experts considered the referendum questions as unconstitutional and believed they in fact hid a plan to restrict national minority rights and that the Social Democratic Party (SDP) intended to propose a motion to amend the Constitution to define which topics could be decided in a referendum and which could not, Troskot said that "the SDP is a party that, whenever citizens launch an initiative for a referendum of this kind, sets additional conditions that further limit the rights of citizens to express themselves."
"Referendums in Croatia are among the strictest if not the strictest in the entire world because an initiative for a referendum has to collect 380,000 signatures in just 14 days, which virtually doesn't allow democracy or citizens to truly express themselves in reference to a referendum. The SDP mayor has curtailed citizens' constitutional rights," Troskot said.
He said that on Tuesday the NGO would present official data regarding the number of signatures collected in the first week of the referendum campaign.
