ZAGREB, 2 February, 2021 - The co-presidents of the opposition Centre party, Marijana Puljak and Dalija Orešković, said on Tuesday they supported a protest announced for tomorrow by businesses closed due to coronavirus restrictions, calling on citizens to support them too and pressure the government.
"Entrepreneurs feel like second-class citizens and they only want equal rules for all," Puljak told the press.
She called on citizens to pressure the government into allowing bar and restaurant owners what shopping malls, petrol stations, bakeries and newsagents were allowed, saying they had a right to work.
Puljak said the government considered enterprise a sin and that it was spreading that climate in public.
She said Prime Minister Andrej Plenković had no working experience outside the HDZ party, "yet he is laughing at and belittling the entrepreneurs fighting for the abolishment of membership in the Croatian Chamber of Commerce."
Puljak and Orešković said COVID compensation should amount to 50% of last year's turnover and that VAT should be cut for all businesses that were not allowed to work.
Puljak said the government should find the money for that by cutting costs, reducing the number of counties, cities, municipalities, invented political functions and subsidies to state-owned loss-makers.
Orešković said they demanded that the government enable gym owners to live off their work.
She said legal certainty had disappeared because the COVID crisis and the state were managed without any scientific basis in the adoption of COVID measures. "We call on citizens... to join in the pressure which small and medium businesses are exerting and to demand that the government introduces clear rules that are equal for all."
Reporters asked her if yesterday's arrest of a Zagreb gym owner, who reopened his establishment despite a ban, was legal.
Orešković said the High Administrative Court yesterday delivered a ruling in the case of Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandić "who, contrary to the law, received HRK 24 million in donations after the presidential campaign was over."
"What kind of state do we live in? Milan Bandić is fully exculpated from any responsibility, while a man who tried to open his own gym to live off his work is a big thief," she said, adding that such a state was not law-based.
Asked if that ruling actually killed off the Conflict of Interest Commission, Orešković said the Commission was killed off when the Constitutional Court handed down a verdict in the case of former HDZ president Tomislav Karamarko.
Since then, considering the strength and role it should have in a democracy, it is as if the Commission no longer exists, she added.
For more on the activities of the Glas Poduzetnika movement, follow the dedicated TCN section.
